For paranoia about 'what other people think' : remember that only some hate, a very few love - and almost all just don't care.

Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.

Life seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another--which is not to say that we should never strive to overcome any of our anxieties or fulfil any of our desires, but rather to suggest that we should perhaps build into our strivings an awareness of the way our goals promise us a respite and a resolution that they cannot, by definition, deliver.

To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.

I was uncomfortable writing fiction. My love was the personal essay rather than the novel.

Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.

Work is most fulfilling when you're at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing.