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

Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.

Most good thinking has its origin in fear.

So many complaints boil down to the belly ache of the fragile, mortal, ignored ego in a vast and indifferent universe.

Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.

Blind impatience is equally evident in the fruit section. Our ancestors might have delighted in the occasional handful of berries found on the underside of a bush in late summer, viewing it as a sign of the unexpected munificence of a divine creator, but we became modern when we gave up on awaiting sporadic gifts from above and sought to render any pleasing sensation immediately and repeatedly available.

Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own - but that we could never have described on our own.