The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others' appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.

Let death find us as we are building up our matchstick protests against its waves.

You need a long hard day's work to reveal the logic of the craving for very bad tv and alcohol.

It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are.

People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft.

Though debts are condemned in the financial world, the world of friendship and love may perversely depend on well-managed debts.

Rather than getting more spoilt with age, as difficulties pile up, epiphanies of gratitude abound.