I'm also interested in the modern suggestion that you can have a combination of love and sex in a marriage - which no previous society has ever believed.

The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn't call.

I assemble my ideas in pieces on a computer file, then gradually find a place for them on a piece of scaffolding I erect.

Politics is so difficult, it's generally only people who aren't quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.

A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.

Differ though we might with Christianity's view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis, which seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious one-that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life.

I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.