It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened through immersive dousings in the darkness which religions have explored. This is a particular priority for secular Americans, perhaps the most anxious and disappointed people on earth, for their nation infuses them with the most extreme hopes about what they may be able to achieve in their working lives and relationships.

We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.

Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentially for reasons of status: for not showing them respect, for humiliating them.

Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.

The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word "luxury.

Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.

We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame; just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.