Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.

He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on professional matters, then promptly stop in his tracks to peer inquisitively into his guest's eyes for signs of boredom or mockery, being intelligent enough to be unable fully to believe in his own claims to significance. He might, in a past life, have been a particularly canny and sharp-tongued royal advisor.

Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.

One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.

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

Distress at losing an object can be as much a frustration at the intellectual mystery of the disappearance as about the loss itself.

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