Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.

I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.

Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.

Nowhere was the airport's charm more concentrated than on the screens placed at intervals across the terminal which announced, in deliberately workmanlike fonts, the itineraries of aircraft about to take to the skies. These screens implied a feeling of infinite and immediate possibility: they suggested the ease with which we might impulsively approach a ticket desk and, within a few hours, embark for a country where the call to prayer rang out over shuttered whitewashed houses, where we understood nothing of the language and where no one knew our identities.

Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.

Maturity: knowing where you're crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.

You need a long hard day's work to reveal the logic of the craving for very bad tv and alcohol.