The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort.

It seemed an advantage to be traveling alone. Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others...Being closely observed by a companion can also inhibit our observation of others; then, too, we may become caught up in adjusting ourselves to the companion's questions and remarks, or feel the need to make ourselves seem more normal than is good for our curiosity.

The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.

He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on professional matters, then promptly stop in his tracks to peer inquisitively into his guest's eyes for signs of boredom or mockery, being intelligent enough to be unable fully to believe in his own claims to significance. He might, in a past life, have been a particularly canny and sharp-tongued royal advisor.

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.

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

One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.