The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.

It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sobering reminder of the fragility of its own achievements. Ruins pose a direct challenge to our concern with power and rank, with bustle and fame. They puncture the inflated folly of our exhaustive and frenetic pursuit of wealth.

Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.

What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of disappointing others.

Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the status hierarchy; they have attemptee, rather, to institute new kinds of hierarchies based on sets of values unrecognised by, and critical of, those of the majority.. They have provided us with persuasive and consoling reminders that there is more than one way of succeeding in life.

I'm also interested in the modern suggestion that you can have a combination of love and sex in a marriage - which no previous society has ever believed.

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.