Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.

Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.

The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.

One of love's greatest drawbacks is that, for a while at least, it is in danger of making us happy.

In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.

We tend to believe in the modern secular world that if you tell someone something once, they'll remember it. ... Religions go, "Nonsense. You need to keep repeating the lesson 10 times a day. So get on your knees and repeat it." That's what all religions tell us: "Get on your knees and repeat it 10 or 20 or 15 times a day." Otherwise our minds are like sieves.

Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.