What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.
Never, ever become a writer. It’s a nightmare.
The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.
Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.
Let death find us as we are building up our matchstick protests against its waves.
On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community we live in. We tend to become good or bad depending on the cues sent out within a particular space.
When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I’m basically the child of Richard Dawkins.
We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.
Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.
I was uncomfortable writing fiction. My love was the personal essay, rather than the novel.
What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.
It’s clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.
Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you’ll be bombarded with suggestions of how to have a successful life. Some of these suggestions are deeply unhelpful to our own projects and priorities – and we should take care.
I passionately believe that’s it’s not just what you say that counts, it’s also how you say it – that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.
I assemble my ideas in pieces on a computer file, then gradually find a place for them on a piece of scaffolding I erect.
I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
The finest proof of our loyalty toward one another was our monstrous disloyalties towards everyone else.
There are people who say, ‘Oh this guy is quite thick.’ I think the reason is that, increasingly, I don’t mind being simple in terms of literary expression. Others say, ‘No, no, no. He went to Cambridge. He got a good degree. He must be Einstein.’