One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.

Distress at losing an object can be as much a frustration at the intellectual mystery of the disappearance as about the loss itself.

The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness".

For paranoia about 'what other people think' : remember that only some hate, a very few love - and almost all just don't care.

Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.

We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.

He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity - suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be at heart nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction.