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

as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered.

The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.

It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.

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

Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.

Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.