We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.

The dream of the news is that it makes us care about other people and situations. But we cannot identify with people to whom we haven't been introduced. Humans will only respond to art, to people who are skilled in making you care.

We accept the need to train extensively to fly a plane; but think instinct should be enough for marrying and raising kids.

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?

Every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.

Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.

Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.