A good half of the art of living is resilience.

One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.

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

The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.

The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.

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

Rather than teasing the buyers, we may blame the society in which they lived for setting up a situation where the purchase of ornate cabinets felt psychologically necessary and rewarding, where respect was dependent on baroque displays. Rather than a tale of greed, the history of luxury could more accurately be read as a record of emotional trauma. It is the legacy of those who have felt pressured by the disdain of others to add an extraordinary amount to their bare selves in order to signal that they too may lay a claim to love.