I've read, like, 10,000 self-help books.

When I meditate, I can feel an energy that is much bigger than me but is also part of me, and it's a very powerful energy.

My big journey was around money. I was a successful writer, I was a musician, but I was just always broke.

Being cool was always very important to me, but I decided to get rich, so I went for it.

I was broke into my forties.

If you are a human being in modern society on planet Earth, you need money to do pretty much everything, especially to grow into a more expansive version of yourself.

Sometimes, if the people in your life really drag you down, you need to stop spending time with them.

If you want to change your life, you have to do things you've never done before.

We notice in others only those things that relate to ourselves. For example, you could find someone hilarious and brilliant, and I could find the same person idiotic and annoying. It's the same person doing the same thing, but because we are viewing them from our own unique perspectives, they mirror back to us something different.

I have more experience than I care to have on what it feels like to be broke, confused, and frustrated when it comes to money.

A sense of urgency is motivating.

If you're confident, then you don't feel weird about showing your vulnerability and opening yourself up to learning from somebody else. Insecure people stay where they are because they're afraid of admitting their weaknesses.

We love to commiserate and troubleshoot and prepare for the worst, and gratitude yanks us out of that and reminds us of the ridiculous amount of infinite blessings that are around us at all times.

People tend to create drama and make things far worse than they are in reality.

If you're taking a risk and you are not scared in some way, you're doing something wrong.

Make an effort to do the things that you enjoy instead of being lazy about it. Life is worth the hassle.

Treat everyone on Earth like you're staying in their home. Because you are.

People who truly love their lives are the most inspiring people of all.

Pay attention to how you think and speak, and if it turns out that you're sounding snide or crappy or doubtful, make the conscious decision to change.

I'm in trouble with some activist women because I refuse to say I'm bisexual.

For the vast majority of my adult life, I was a freelance writer, forever scrambling for work that paid an insulting non-amount.

We are on this planet but once, and to spend it holding back our gushing appreciation of the things that light us up is a shameful waste.

People love to tell you what you should and shouldn't want, regardless of what you have to say about it.

Yes, there will be challenges, and things will blow up in your face, but learning experiences are different from wasting your life pushing a boulder up a hill.

We live in a time of astounding technological advancements. There are deep-sea drones and live-streaming virtual reality.

Wellness, I came to realize, will not happen by accident. It must be a daily practice, especially for those of us who are more susceptible to the oppressiveness of the world.

The ancients often believed a celestial event like an eclipse to be a bad omen, that the sun or the moon vanishing from the sky was a harbinger of disaster, a sign of devastation or destruction to come.

Oceans of emotion can be transmitted through a text message, an emoji sequence, and a winking semicolon, but humans are hardwired to respond to visuals.

It wasn't always easy - getting dumped by my female friends for their newfound boyfriends, husbands, girlfriends stung; I felt like a jilted lover, heartbroken and wondering what I'd done wrong. But it was also easier to forgive them, to accept what time and energy they were willing to offer, even if it was less than what I wanted.

Social media seemed to promise a way to better connect with people; instead, it seems to have made it easier to tune out the people we don't agree with.

Ultimately, what the tech industry really cares about is ushering in the future, but it conflates technological progress with societal progress.

When I was a kid, 'Quantum Leap' was one of my favorite TV shows.

The American understanding of China is filtered through years of politics; we rarely see the culture on its own terms.

Many of the short videos on Vine feel as though they belong to an ever-evolving, completely new genre of modern folk art.

Although drag has a long cultural history in America, it remained largely underground till the late 1980s.

The more films and TV shows I spoil for myself, the more I am convinced that truly interesting stories can't be ruined - the plot thickens with the viewing like a rich sauce.

'Drag Race' has become a staple of modern television for the way it skewers expectations and attitudes about gender, much as a show like 'black-ish' works to challenge stereotypes about black families in America.

There is no picturesque version of what self-care looks like; it's different for every person who wants to practice it.

The fact that I live in New York, a city that thrives on accessibility, might explain why I was slow to grasp the appeal of Alexa. Here we have bodegas on every corner, most open 24 hours, in case you need to pick up a roll of toilet paper or a bottle of hot sauce in the middle of the night.

For many of us, our smartphones have become extensions of our brains - we outsource essential cognitive functions, like memory, to them, which means they soak up much more information than we realize.

In many ways, Obama is America's first truly digital president. His 2008 campaign relied heavily on social media to lift him out of obscurity.

Once, at Thanksgiving, a neighbor wandered in while my cousin Lisa worked on a turkey, shearing meat off its frame and sliding the steaming slices onto a big flowered plate. 'Hey, that's the man's job,' she yelped, in between slurps of her Big Gulp. No one even paused to acknowledge the comment; everyone just laughed and laughed.

The types of ideas protected by intellectual-property law typically don't include a clever catchphrase on a Vine or a film idea in a tweet.

The speed with which modern society has adapted to accommodate the world's vast spectrum of gender and sexual identities may be the most important cultural metamorphosis of our time.

Best-friend tattoos require so much prep work, which adds to their legitimacy. First, a friendship must be deep enough to warrant the rite; then the perfect symbol must be found to forge the bond.

Our phones don't just keep us in touch with the world; they're also diaries, confessional booths, repositories for our deepest secrets.

Falling head over heels in love with women was a habit I thought I'd thoroughly grown out of in middle school, when a group of about five girls and I color-coordinated our outfits and spent weekends and even some weeknights sprawled out in each others bedrooms.

Most times, at the movies, my stress levels are ratcheted up so high that I can barely sit through the full production without excusing myself, clutching people next to me or crawling out of my seat, incapacitated by the unknown.

Obama was the first American president to see technology as an engine to improve lives and accelerate society more quickly than any government body could.

High school is already an academic and social pressure cooker, and the forces that make it stressful are amplified for queer students.