Dreams reveal we never quite get 'over' anything: it's all still in there somewhere..

[T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister than our habit of looking at them in the wrong way,….

One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully..

The origins and travels of our purchases remain matters of indifference, although to the more imaginative at least a slight dampness at the bottom of….

There is real danger of a disconnect between what's on your business card and who you are deep inside, and it's not a disconnect that the world is re….

Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as ….

It would be foolish to describe the logistics hub as merely ugly, for it has the horrifying, soulless, immaculate beauty characteristic of many of th….

.. if you asked most people whether they believed in love or not, they’d probably say they didn’t. Yet that’s not necessarily what they truly think. ….

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 ….

Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them?.

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….

Rather than saying 'I hate mess', it might draw more compassion to say, 'mess terrifies me as a harbinger of catastrophe'..

Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried..

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

Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who c….

It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequis….

to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to ackno….

These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts….

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

One of love's greatest drawbacks is that, for a while at least, it is in danger of making us happy..

What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their be….