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

It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are.

Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentially for reasons of status: for not showing them respect, for humiliating them.

There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable loss that all choice (however wonderful) has entailed.

The challenge of modern relationships: how to prove more interesting than the other's smartphone.

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.

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