There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.

When work is not going well, it's useful to remember that our identities stretch beyond what is on the business card, that we were people long before we became workers - and will continue to be human once we have put our tools down forever.

Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.

The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.

Blind impatience is equally evident in the fruit section. Our ancestors might have delighted in the occasional handful of berries found on the underside of a bush in late summer, viewing it as a sign of the unexpected munificence of a divine creator, but we became modern when we gave up on awaiting sporadic gifts from above and sought to render any pleasing sensation immediately and repeatedly available.

Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.

You need a long hard day's work to reveal the logic of the craving for very bad tv and alcohol.