[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.

Objectively good spaces to work rarely end up being so; in their faultlessness, quiet and well-equipped studios have a habit of rendering the fear of failure overwhelming. Original thoughts are like shy animals. We sometimes have to look the other way - towards a busy street or terminal - before they run out of their burrows.

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.

One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.

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

Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.

It's as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you're living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.