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.

As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.

Life seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another--which is not to say that we should never strive to overcome any of our anxieties or fulfil any of our desires, but rather to suggest that we should perhaps build into our strivings an awareness of the way our goals promise us a respite and a resolution that they cannot, by definition, deliver.

Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as inherent & unbudgeable as those in food.

Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.

The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust's therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.

In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.