Insomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day.

Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.

We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it).

The genius of religions is that they structure the inner life.

There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable loss that all choice (however wonderful) has entailed.

Literature deeply stands opposed to the dominant value system-the one that rewards money and power. Writers are on the other side-they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are of deep importance but can’t afford airtime in a commercialized, status-consciou s, and cynical world.

At the beginning of human history, as we struggled to light fires and to chisel fallen trees into rudimentary canoes, who could have predicted that long after we had managed to send men to the moon and areoplanes to Australasia, we would still have such trouble knowing how to tolerate ourselves, forgive our loved ones, and apologise for our tantrums?