“The freedom of an unscheduled afternoon brought confusion rather than joy. Julius had always been focused. When he was not seeing patients, other important projects and activities-writing, teaching, tennis, research-clamored for his attention. But today nothing seemed important. He suspected that nothing had ever been important, that his mind had arbitrarily imbued projects with importance and then cunningly covered its traces. Today he saw through the ruse of a lifetime. Today there was nothing important to do, and he ambled aimlessly down Union Street.”

“I always imagined that you might write something about me. I wanted to leave an imprint on your life. I don’t want to be “just another patient”. I wanted to be “special”. I want to be something, anything. I feel like nothing, no one. If I left an imprint on your life, maybe I would be someone, someone you wouldn’t forget. I’d exist then. (Marge’s letter to Yalom)”

“I do not like to work with patients who are in love. Perhaps it is because of envy - I, too, crave enchantment. Perhaps it is because love and psychotherapy are fundamentally incompatible. The good therapist fights darkness and seeks illumination, while romantic love is sustained by mystery and crumbles upon inspection.”

“The amount of death terror experienced is closely related to the amount of life unlived.”

“We're not teaching our students the importance of relationships with other people: how you work with them, what the relational pathology consists of, how you examine your own conscience, how you examine the inner world, how you examine your dreams.”

“Someone's got to do some more research, but I would really like to know: when a CBT therapist really gets distressed, who does he go see?”

“Does a being who requires meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?”

“Encased in an elaborate illusion of unlimited power and progress, each of us subscribes, at least until one's midlife crisis, to the belief that existence consists of an eternal, upward spiral of achievement, dependent on will alone. This comforting illusion may be shattered by some urgent irreversible experience ... None more potently confronts us with finiteness and contingency than the imminence of our own death.”

“Death anxiety is the mother of all religions, which, in one way or another, attempt to temper the anguish of our finitude.”

“Psychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of medicine, you never really finish. Your greatest instrument is you, yourself, and the work of self-understanding is endless. I'm still learning.”

“You will search the world over and not find a nonsuperstitious community. As long as there is ignorance, there will be adherence to superstition. Dispelling ignorance is the only solution. That is why I teach.”