Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.

The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.

Though debts are condemned in the financial world, the world of friendship and love may perversely depend on well-managed debts.

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

There is psychological pleasure in this takeoff, too, for the swiftness of the plane’s ascent is an exemplary symbol of transformation. The display of power can inspire us to imagine analogous, decisive shifts in our own lives, to imagine that we, too, might one day surge above much that now looms over us.” P. 38-39

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

What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.