One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?

The more dignity is widely and freely available in a society, the less people want to be famous.

Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as 'doing nothing'.

The problem isn't so much finding good ideas (there is no shortage) as embedding the ones we have into everyday practice.

People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft.

According to Montaigne, it was the oppressive notion that we had complete mental control over our bodies, and the horror of departing from this portrait of normality, that had left the man unable to perform sexually.

The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable.