“Life can be so hard," I said, moved. "Yes. But if a person hasn't ever experienced true de-spair, she grows old never knowing how to evaluate where she is in life; never understanding what joy really is. I'm grateful for it."

When we see people in our peer group play with an idea, our behavior changes. That’s how intelligence is created. That’s how culture is created.

And, finally, I want us collectively, as citizens of the world, to reclaim our ability to create and innovate in a rapidly changing world, recognizing what we gain by harnessing the power of every kind of mind.

Because the world I was born into did not yet distinguish between different ways of thinking, it was disconcerting to discover that other people didn’t think the same way I did.

We assume that the dominance of language forms not only the foundation of how we communicate, but also the foundation of how we think—and in fact for centuries, we have been taught to believe just that.

[…] the work of changing, imagining, reimagining, building, and rebuilding the world—is on me, too, because it’s on all of us.

“She wouldn’t admit it—she might not even realize it herself, but she’s the kind of person who would feel beholden to me. She would think I need her. When what I really need is for her to be happy, whether it’s with me, or alone, or with someone else.”