I know a lot about writing, but I don't know much about how other industries work. I've tried to use my naivety to my advantage.

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

Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.

You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.

It seemed an advantage to be traveling alone. Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others...Being closely observed by a companion can also inhibit our observation of others; then, too, we may become caught up in adjusting ourselves to the companion's questions and remarks, or feel the need to make ourselves seem more normal than is good for our curiosity.

Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won't find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity. We throw a cordon of love around the chosen one and decide that everything within it will somehow be free of our faults. We locate inside another a perfection that eludes us within ourselves, and through our union with the beloved hope to maintain (against the evidence of all self-knowledge) a precarious faith in our species.