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

[T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister than our habit of looking at them in the wrong way, through lenses clouded by distraction, exhaustion and fear, which blind us to the fact that they are really, despite a thousand differences, just altered versions of ourselves: fellow fragile, uncertain, flawed beings likewise craving love and in urgent need of forgiveness.

As victims of hurt, we frequently don't bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.

Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.

Out of the millions of people we live among, most of whom we habitually ignore and are ignored by in turn, there are always a few that hold hostage our capacity for happiness, whom we could recognize by their smell alone and whom we would rather die than be without.

He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.

Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.