We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.

There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is also in many ways a conflict about status: it's a war between two peoples who feel deeply humiliated by the other, who want the other to respect them. Battles over status can be even more intractable than those over land or water or oil.

The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things

My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.

Religions are so subtle, so complicated, so intelligent in many ways that they're not fit to be abandoned to the religious alone; they're for all of us.

Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.