Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.

Rather than saying 'I hate mess', it might draw more compassion to say, 'mess terrifies me as a harbinger of catastrophe'.

Mental health: having enough safe places in your mind for your thoughts to settle.

Good sex isn't just fun, it keeps us sane and happy. Having sex with someone makes us feel wanted, alive and potent.

Religions are so subtle, so complicated, so intelligent in many ways that they're not fit to be abandoned to the religious alone; they're for all of us.

We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need — but are at constant risk of forgetting what we need — within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to staunch the disappearance of our true selves.

Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.