ByronKatie.com

Stress is an alarm clock that lets you know you’ve attached to something not true for you.

An uncomfortable feeling is not an enemy. It’s a gift that says, "Get honest; inquire." We reach out for alcohol, or television, or credit cards, so we can focus out there and not have to look at the feeling. And that's as it should be, because in our innocence we haven't known how. So now what we can do is reach out for a paper and a pencil, write thought down, and investigate.

Every story, every thing is God: reality. It apparently emerges from out of Itself and appears as a life. It lives forever within the story, until the story ends. From out of Itself I appeared as my story, until the questions brought me home.

If you want something to be different than it is, you might as well teach a cat to bark. You can try and try, and in the end the cat will look up at you and say, "Meow." Wanting something to be different than it is is hopeless.

When someone criticizes me, here’s a phrase that is my mantra: “Could he be right?”

Wonderful one, are you beginning to understand that it’s not reality that changes, it’s what you believe that changes reality?

The Work doesn’t help anyone; it’s your answers that help you.

Stephen has been collecting a few dialogues between us, which he calls "Katie koans." I don't know anything about the Zen tradition—or about any other spiritual tradition, for that matter—but he says that these delight him like the dialogues of the ancient Chinese Zen masters. He loves being the "straight man."

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Once, shortly after he met me, Stephen was returning to our restaurant table from the men’s room.
Katie: Did you have a wonderful time?
Stephen: (Silence, dumbfounded, dazzled.)

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Out walking on a spring day in Aspen, Colorado.
Katie: Don’t you love what the wind says as it moves among the branches?
Stephen: What does it say?
Katie: Nothing. That’s what I love about it.

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Introducing him to a friend:
Katie: This is my husband, Stephen. He still thinks he’s Jewish.
(Stephen breaks into a smile.)

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After we both got pneumonia vaccine shots, I read to Stephen a flyer that warned, “As with any medicine, there is a very small risk that serious problems, even death, could occur after getting a vaccine.”
Stephen (smiling): I hope you don’t die.
Katie: You don’t ever wish me well, do you?
Stephen: I’m so selfish.

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I receive a lot of email about my relationship and marriage with Stephen. Here is a typical moment. We are very quiet together most of the time, and I appreciate the ease and yes, the bliss that meets with that silence.

Stephen: "Here’s the salad. Let me know if it needs more vinegar."

A few minutes pass.

Katie: "How was your morning?"

Stephen: "Excellent. Hector was just killed."

Some of you know Stephen as a poet, scholar, and translator of great works (all of which would be on my reading list, if I had one). He had just finished his verse translation of Homer’s Iliad, to be published in October.

Katie: "Imagine if they had just done The Work, instead of fighting for all those years."

Stephen: "Of course that would have been better for them, but we wouldn’t have the Iliad. Personally, I’m opposed to violence, except when it happens in great poetry." (Pause) "And how was your morning?"

Katie: “This is the best salad I’ve ever had in my entire life!”

And that’s about it. Life with Stephen? Soooo exciting!!!!