One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on..

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

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 don't exist unless there is someone who can see us existing, what we say has no meaning until someone can understand, while to be surrounded by fr….

If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in….

We may not agree with what religions are trying to teach us, but we can admire the institutional way in which they're doing it..

Despite its maddeningly vague, inarticulate form, anxiety is almost always trying to tell you something useful and apposite..

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 ….

Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfêted but life-enhancing thoughts..

To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity..

The degree of sympathy we feel regarding another's fiasco is directly proportional to how easy or difficult it is for us to imagine ourselves, under ….

It would scarcely be acceptable, for example, to ask in the course of an ordinary conversation what our society holds to be the purpose of work..

Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all..

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

Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub compo….

The problem isn't so much finding good ideas (there is no shortage) as embedding the ones we have into everyday practice..

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 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 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….

Must being in love always mean being in pain?.

Nowhere was the airport's charm more concentrated than on the screens placed at intervals across the terminal which announced, in deliberately workma….