According to Montaigne, it was the oppressive notion that we had complete mental control over our bodies, and the horror of departing from this portrait of normality, that had left the man unable to perform sexually.

No one is able to produce a great work of art without experience, nor achieve a worldly position immediately, nor be a great lover at the first attempt; and in the interval between initial failure and subsequent success, in the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation. We suffer because we cannot spontaneously master the ingredients of fulfillment.

Despite its maddeningly vague, inarticulate form, anxiety is almost always trying to tell you something useful and apposite.

It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive when there is no one for us to hold or love.

Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis of morality, or a sort of madness?

The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.

Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.