We don't really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped ... We suffer, therefore we think.

Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.

Writing a book has about it some of the anxiety of telling a joke and having to wait several years to know whether or not it was funny.

We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame; just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.

It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive when there is no one for us to hold or love.

It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.

The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.