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 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.

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

Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored.

When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins.

The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.

As victims of hurt, we frequently don't bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.