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?

You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is also in many ways a conflict about status: it's a war between two peoples who feel deeply humiliated by the other, who want the other to respect them. Battles over status can be even more intractable than those over land or water or oil.

Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.

The problem isn't so much finding good ideas (there is no shortage) as embedding the ones we have into everyday practice.

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

True love is a lack of desire to check one's smartphone in another's presence.