I think people want to get married to end their emotional uncertainty. In a way, they want to end powerful feelings, or certainly the negative ones.

Never, ever become a writer. It's a nightmare.

He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity - suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be at heart nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction.

Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.

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.

One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?

When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.