Rather than getting more spoilt with age, as difficulties pile up, epiphanies of gratitude abound.

Life gives us no such handy markers - a storm comes, and far from this being a harbinger of death and collapse, during its course a person discovers love and truth, beauty and happiness, the rain lashing at the windows all the while.

We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.

It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.

Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.

Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.

Curiosity takes ignorance seriously - and is confident enough to admit when it's in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.