We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers... Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness.

There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.

Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind. The flawless object throws into perspective the mediocrity that surrounds it. We are reminded of the way we would wish things always to be and of how incomplete our lives remain.

I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.

Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.

Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.

Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored.