I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.
Alain de BottonForgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
Alain de BottonLife seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another--which is not to say that we should never strive to overcome any of our anxieties or fulfil any of our desires, but rather to suggest that we should perhaps build into our strivings an awareness of the way our goals promise us a respite and a resolution that they cannot, by definition, deliver.
Alain de BottonThe problem with clichรฉs is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones...If...we are obliged to create our own language, it is because there are dimensions to ourselves absent from clichรฉs, which require us to flout etiquette in order to convey with greater accuracy the distinctive timbre of our thought.
Alain de Botton