According to Montaigne, it was the oppressive notion that we had complete mental control over our bodies, and the horror of departing from this portr….

Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom we know nothing. Romances are never as pure as those we imagine during long trai….

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

He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity - suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be at heart no….

We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us..

Man seems merely dust postponed: the sublime as an encounter - pleasurable, intoxicating, even - with human weakness in the face of strength, age and….

The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness"..

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

Bad art might be defined as a series of bad choices about what to show and what to leave out..

The assumption is that life doesn't need to be navigated with lessons. You can just do it intuitively. After all, you only need to achieve autonomy f….

We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe..

Unrequited love may be painful, but it is safely painful, because it does not involve inflicting damage on anyone but oneself, a private pain that is….

We need objects to remind us of the commitments we've made. That carpet from Morocco reminds us of the impulsive, freedom-loving side of ourselves we….

My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane..

Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for making money..

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 p….

The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Famil….

It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming... If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept….

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 wh….

We fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone as beautiful, intelligent, and witty as we are ugly, stupid, and dull. But what….

Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to….