Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.

Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis of morality, or a sort of madness?

The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.

People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.

People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft.

Must being in love always mean being in pain?

Rather than teasing the buyers, we may blame the society in which they lived for setting up a situation where the purchase of ornate cabinets felt psychologically necessary and rewarding, where respect was dependent on baroque displays. Rather than a tale of greed, the history of luxury could more accurately be read as a record of emotional trauma. It is the legacy of those who have felt pressured by the disdain of others to add an extraordinary amount to their bare selves in order to signal that they too may lay a claim to love.