Perhaps because the origins of a certain kind of love lie in an impulse to escape ourselves and out weaknesses by an alliance with the beautiful and noble. But if the loved ones love us back, we are forced to return to ourselves, and are hence reminded of the things that had driven us into love in the first place. Perhaps it was not love we wanted after all, perhaps it was simply someone in whom to believe, but how can we continue to believe the the beloved now that they believe in us?

The most unbearable thing about many successful people is not - as we flatteringly think - how lazy they are, but how hard they work.

One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.

We don't really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped ... We suffer, therefore we think.

The universe is large and we are tiny, without the need for further religious superstructure. One can have so-called spiritual moments without belief in the spirit.

We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.

The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn't call.