True love is a lack of desire to check one's smartphone in another's presence.

Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for making money.

It seems that most of us could benefit from a brush with a near-fatal disaster to help us recognise the important things that we are too defeated or embittered to recognise from day to day.

The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.

Let's say you went to Harvard or Oxford or Cambridge, and you said, 'I've come here because I'm in search of morality, guidance and consolation; I want to know how to live,' - they would show you the way to the insane asylum.

The study of maps and the perusal of travel books aroused in me a secret fascination that was at times almost irresistible.

If one felt successful, there'd be so little incentive to be successful.