The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be.

We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.

In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.

The problem with clichés is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones...If...we are obliged to create our own language, it is because there are dimensions to ourselves absent from clichés, which require us to flout etiquette in order to convey with greater accuracy the distinctive timbre of our thought.

The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can't accept that.

Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentially for reasons of status: for not showing them respect, for humiliating them.

What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of disappointing others.