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

We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.

I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.

One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.

People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.

If optimism is important, it's because many outcomes are determined by how much of it we bring to the task. It is an important ingredient of success. This flies in the face of the elite view that talent is the primary requirement of a good life, but in many cases the difference between success and failure is determined by nothing more than our sense of what is possible and the energy we can muster to convince others of our due. We might be doomed not by a lack of skill, but by an absence of hope!

The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable.