We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.

The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable.

The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can't accept that.

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

The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.

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

[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, through lenses clouded by distraction, exhaustion and fear, which blind us to the fact that they are really, despite a thousand differences, just altered versions of ourselves: fellow fragile, uncertain, flawed beings likewise craving love and in urgent need of forgiveness.