The Arab-Israeli conflict is also in many ways a conflict about status: it's a war between two peoples who feel deeply humiliated by the other, who want the other to respect them. Battles over status can be even more intractable than those over land or water or oil.

The best cure for one's bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.

Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfêted but life-enhancing thoughts.

Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.

Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.

The media insists on taking what someone didn't mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.

One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.