The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren’t there. The answers are there in the morning.
What kills us isn’t one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can’t turn down for fear of disappointing others.
We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
A ‘good job’ can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
So many complaints boil down to the belly ache of the fragile, mortal, ignored ego in a vast and indifferent universe.
Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.
You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.
Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.
Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
Politics is so difficult, it’s generally only people who aren’t quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.
We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture – and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.
Love is an incurable disease. In love, there is permanent suffering. Those who love and those who are happy are not the same.
Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.
Writing a book has about it some of the anxiety of telling a joke and having to wait several years to know whether or not it was funny.
Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.
We should keep a careful diary of our moments of envy: they are our covert guides to what we should try to do next.
Good sex isn’t just fun, it keeps us sane and happy. Having sex with someone makes us feel wanted, alive and potent.
Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis of morality, or a sort of madness?
In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day’s work for a writer. You can’t put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well.