It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.

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.

An argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths - by panicked shouting.

Insomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day.

We are certainly influenced by role models, and if we are surrounded by images of beautiful rich people, we will start to think that to be beautiful and rich is very important - just as in the Middle Ages, people were surrounded by images of religious piety.

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

Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.