What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus i….

I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas..

A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which the consequences of our failures would necessarily ….

People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft..

Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us..

It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic s….

Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others..

What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home..

The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our so….

I think people want to get married to end their emotional uncertainty. In a way, they want to end powerful feelings, or certainly the negative ones..

The genius of religions is that they structure the inner life..

A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It’s almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments..

I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay….

It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have though….

Although I don't believe in God, Bach's music shows me what a love of God must feel like..

At the beginning of human history, as we struggled to light fires and to chisel fallen trees into rudimentary canoes, who could have predicted that l….

True love is a lack of desire to check one's smartphone in another's presence..

Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go..

When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins..

The real issue is not whether baking biscuits is meaningful, but the extent to which the activity can seem to be so after it has been continuously st….

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains..