The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.

Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.

My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.

It's hard loving those who don't much like themselves: "If you're so great, why would you think I'm so great.

Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfêted but life-enhancing thoughts.

Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind. The flawless object throws into perspective the mediocrity that surrounds it. We are reminded of the way we would wish things always to be and of how incomplete our lives remain.

The challenge of modern relationships: how to prove more interesting than the other's smartphone.