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

Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others - because it's a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.

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

As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.

I'm also interested in the modern suggestion that you can have a combination of love and sex in a marriage - which no previous society has ever believed.

The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.

Serious journalists often imagine society is adrift because people don't know certain things. Yet often, they know but just don't care. So the task of serious journalism isn't just to lay out truths. It is to make vital truths compelling to a big audience.