To be loved by someone is to realize how much they share the same needs that lie at the heart of our own attraction to them. Albert Camus suggested that we fall in love with people because, from the outside, they look so whole, physically whole and emotionally 'together' - when subjectively we feel dispersed and confused. We would not love if there were no lack within us, but we are offended by the discovery of a similar lack in the other. Expecting to find the answer, we find only the duplicate of our own problem.

The very act of drawing an object, however badly, swiftly takes the drawer from a woolly sense of what the object looks like to a precise awareness of its component parts and particularities.

At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.

The study of maps and the perusal of travel books aroused in me a secret fascination that was at times almost irresistible.

Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.

To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.

The best cure for one's bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.