He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity - suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be at heart nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction.

Let's say you went to Harvard or Oxford or Cambridge, and you said, 'I've come here because I'm in search of morality, guidance and consolation; I want to know how to live,' - they would show you the way to the insane asylum.

We feel something, and reach out for the nearest phrase or hum with which to communicate, but which fails to do justice to what has induced us to do so....We stay on the outside of our impressions, as if staring at them through a frosted window, superficially related to them, yet estranged from whatever has eluded casual definition.

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

Much of the really serious trouble in the world gets going with a sense of humiliation.

Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis of morality, or a sort of madness?

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