Although I don't believe in God, Bach's music shows me what a love of God must feel like.

It's very hard to respect people on holiday - everybody looks so silly at the beach, it makes you hate humanity - but when you see people at their work they elicit respect, whether it's a mechanic, a stonemason or an accountant.

to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap

Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.

Much of the really serious trouble in the world gets going with a sense of humiliation.

as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered.

Literature deeply stands opposed to the dominant value system-the one that rewards money and power. Writers are on the other side-they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are of deep importance but can’t afford airtime in a commercialized, status-consciou s, and cynical world.