In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn't worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there's no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven't had a good time, "Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?"

Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.

The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children.

One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.

Our sense of what is valuable will hence be radically distorted if we must perpetually condemn as tedious everything we lack, simply because we lack it.

People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft.