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.

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.

I know a lot about writing, but I don't know much about how other industries work. I've tried to use my naivety to my advantage.

As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.

Gaffe-focused journalism: revenge of intelligent people who know true evils are out there but lack the access/time to get to them.

I think people want to get married to end their emotional uncertainty. In a way, they want to end powerful feelings, or certainly the negative ones.

It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.