SUCCESSFUL FRIENDSHIP

'Successful friendship, like successful therapy, is a balance of deference and defiance. It involves showing positive regard, but also calling people on their self-deceptions.'

David Brooks, How to Know a Person, p.257.

WRITING IS ACTUALLY READING

'The writer David Lodge once noted that 90 percent of what we call writing is actually reading. It's going back over your work so you can change and improve it.'

David Brooks, How to Know a Person, p.167.

POWER DYNAMICS

'Remember that the person who is lower in any power structure than you has a greater awareness of the situation than you do. A servant knows more about his master than the master knows about the servant. Someone who is being sat on knows a lot more about the sitter - the way he shifts his weight and moves - whereas the sitter may not be aware that the sat-on person is even there.'

David Brooks, How to Know a Person, p.115.

EACH PERSON IS A MYSTERY

'Each person is a mystery. And when you are surrounded by mysteries, as the saying goes, it's best to live life in the from of a question.'

David Brooks, How to Know a Person, p.93.

A GOOD CONVERSATION

'A good conversation is an act of joint exploration. Somebody floats a half-formed idea. Somebody else seizes on the nub of the idea, plays with it, offers her own perspective based on her memories, and floats it back so the other person can respond. A good conversation sparks yo to have thoughts you have never had before. A good conversation starts in one place and ends up in another.'

David Brooks, How to Know a Person, p.73.

EVERY PERSON AN ARTIST

'Every person you meet is an artist who takes the events of life and, over time, creates a very personal way of seeing the world.'

David Brooks, How to Know a Person, p.64.

LIFE SKILLS

'The real act of, say, building a friendship or creating a community involves performing a series of small, concrete social actions well: disagreeing without poisoning the relationship; revealing vulnerability at the appropriate pace; being a good listener; knowing how to end a conversation gracefully; knowing how to ask for and offer forgiveness; knowing how to sit with someone who is suffering; knowing how to host a gathering where everyone feels embraced; knowing how to see things from another's point of view.

These are some of the most important skills a human being can possess, and yet we don't teach them in school. Some days it seems like we have intentionally built a society that gives people little guidance of how to perform the most important activities of life.'

David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, p.8.

THE IDENTITY QUESTION

'The crucial question is not, Who I am? but, Whose am I?'

David Brooks, The Second Mountain, p.310. 

HOW TO BE REMEMBERED

'The uncommitted person is the unremembered person. A person who does not commit to some loyalty outside the self leaves no deep mark on the world.' 

David Brooks, The Second Mountain, p.299. 

PERFECTIONISM MEETS HUMANKIND

'There's no room for perfectionism when you're dealing with something as broken as real human beings, only bemused affection.' 

David Brooks, The Second Mountain, p.183. 

THE PICKLE THAT IS MARRIAGE

'The only way to thrive in marriage is to become a better person - more patient, wise, compassionate, persevering, communicative, and humble. When we make a commitment, we put ourselves into a pickle we have to be selfless to get out of.' 

David Brooks, The Second Mountain, p.174. 

INTIMACY

'Intimacy happens when somebody shares something emotionally meaningful, and the other person receives it and shares back.' 

David Brooks, The Second Mountain, p.151. 

MARRIAGE AS SURVEILLANCE

'...to be married is to volunteer for the most thorough surveillance program known to humankind. The person who is married is watched, more or less all the time. Worse, the awareness that you are being watched compels you to watch yourself. This new self-consciousness introduces you to yourself, to all the stupid things you do, from leaving the cupboards open, to the way you are silent and grumpy in the morning, to the way you avoid any difficult conversation or play passive aggressive when you are feeling hurt, as if life were some elaborate game of victimhood in which if you make your spouse feel guilty for hurting you you will get a slice of cherry cake at the end.' 

David Brooks, The Second Mountain, p.145. 

WRITING

'Writing is really about structure and traffic management. If you don't have the structure right, nothing else will happen.'

David Brooks, The Second Mountain, p.127.  

WHAT OUR HEARTS DESIRE

'The ultimate heart's desire - the love behind all other loves - is the desire to lose yourself in something or someone. Think about it: Almost every movie you've ever seen is about somebody experiencing this intense sense of merging with something, giving themselves away to something - a mission, a cause, a family, a nation, or a beloved.'

David Brooks,  The Second Mountain, p.45.

WHAT WILL YOUR MORAL LEGACY?

'We all grew up in one moral ecology or another. We all create microcultures around us by the way we live our lives and the vibes we send out to those around us, One of the greatest legacies a person can leave is a moral ecology - a system of belief and behavior that lives on after they die.'

David Brooks, The Second Mountain, p.4.

WRITING AS THERAPY

'Those of who are writers work out our stuff in public, even under the guise of pretending to write about someone else. In other words, we try to teach what it is that we really need to learn.' 

David Brooks, The Second Mountain, p.xx.  

WHY LOVE NEEDS COMMITMENT

'A commitment is falling in love with something and then building a structure of behavior around it for those moments when love falters.' 

David Brooks, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, p.xviii.

CONCENTRATION

'If you want to win the war for attention, don't try to say "no"  to the trivial distractions you find on the information smorgasbord; try to say "yes" to the subject that arouses a terrifying longing, and let the terrifying longing crowd out everything else.' 

David Brooks in Cal Newport, Deep Work, p.137. 

LIFE

'...the struggle against sin and for virtue is the central drama of life. No external conflict is as consequential or as dramatic as the inner campaign against our own deficiencies.' 

David Brooks, The Road to Character, p.263.