It is this idea 'decency' should be attached to wealth -and 'indecency'' to poverty - that forms the core of one strand of skeptical complaint against the modern status-ideal. Why should failure to make money be taken as a sign of an unconditionally flawed human being rather than of a fiasco in one particular area if the far larger, more multifaceted, project of leading a good life? Why should both wealth and poverty be read as the predominant guides to an individual's morals ?

Taking architecture seriously therefore makes some singular and strenuous demands upon us...It means conceding that we are inconveniently vulnerable to the colour of our wallpaper and that our sense of purpose may be derailed by an unfortunate bedspread

We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like; we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.

Gaffe-focused journalism: revenge of intelligent people who know true evils are out there but lack the access/time to get to them.

Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.

Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.

We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.