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    “This relationship is our classroom—we are learning to cultivate care, concern, and compassion in the most intimate and difficult of circumstances. There are few things in life more challenging than being married. The intimacy tends to stir up and expose our most poisonous inner energies. If we can learn to love here, we can love anywhere.”

    Will Smith, Will (Page 404)

      “Everyone is struggling. Everyone is having a hard time. Life can be brutal, chaotic, confusing, and excruciating. Our hearts are starving. Loving, giving, helping, serving, protecting, nourishing, empowering, and forgiving are the secrets of ‘the Smile.’ Can you imagine what it would feel like if someone loved you, gave you all you needed, helped you, served you, protected you, nourished you, empowered you, and forgave you?”

      Will Smith, Will (Page 403)

        “The physics of love and happiness are counterintuitive. As long as we are stuck in the need to receive—in the cycle of grasping and clinging and demanding that people and the world around us meet our needs—we will be locked into disappointment, anger, and misery. The sweet paradox is being fulfilled by giving, that your output precipitates the input—giving and receiving become simultaneous. To love and to be loved is the highest human reward and ecstasy. Allowing the best within you to serve and unleash the best within others is the most intense of human pleasures.”

        Will Smith, Will (Page 402)

          “There is nothing that you can receive from the material world that will create inner peace or fulfillment. The truth is, ‘the Smile’ is generated through output. It’s not something you get, it’s something you cultivate through giving. In the end, it will not matter one single bit how well they loved you—you will only gain ‘the Smile’ based on how well you loved them.”

          Will Smith, Will (Page 402)

            “We had concluded that no one can make a person happy. You can make a person smile; you can compose a moment that helps a person to feel good; you can deliver a joke that makes a person laugh; you can create an environment where a person feels safe. We can and must be helpful and kind and loving, but whether a person is happy or not is utterly out of your control. Every person must wage a solitary internal war for their own contentment.”

            Will Smith, Will (Page 357)

              “Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.

              For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

              And stand together yet not too near together:

              For the pillars of the temple stand apart.”

              Kahlil Gibran, via Will (Page 356)

                “Psychologists have written about how our relationship with our parents in childhood and early adolescence creates our ‘map’ for understanding love in adulthood. When we interact with our parents as children, some behaviors and attitudes win us attention and affection and other behaviors and attitudes cause us to feel abandoned, unsafe, and unloved. The behaviors and attitudes that win us affection often come to define what we understand as love.”

                Will Smith, Will (Page 48)