Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.

After 40 (old age for most of man's history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.

A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.

Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.

A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.

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

Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom we know nothing. Romances are never as pure as those we imagine during long train journeys, as we secretly contemplate a beautiful person who is gazing out of the window – a perfect love story interrupted only when the beloved looks back into the carriage and starts up a dull conversation about the excessive price of the on-board sandwiches with a neighbour or blows her nose aggressively into a handkerchief.