We are sensitized by the books we read. And the more books we read, and the deeper their lessons sink into us, the more pairs of glasses we have. And those glasses enable us to see things we would have otherwise missed.

It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.

The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust's therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.

The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things

There's a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.

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

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