We should read other people's books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing, even if it is another writer's thought that help us to do so.

He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on professional matters, then promptly stop in his tracks to peer inquisitively into his guest's eyes for signs of boredom or mockery, being intelligent enough to be unable fully to believe in his own claims to significance. He might, in a past life, have been a particularly canny and sharp-tongued royal advisor.

Gaffe-focused journalism: revenge of intelligent people who know true evils are out there but lack the access/time to get to them.

Serious journalists often imagine society is adrift because people don't know certain things. Yet often, they know but just don't care. So the task of serious journalism isn't just to lay out truths. It is to make vital truths compelling to a big audience.

As victims of hurt, we frequently don't bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.

Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.

The assumption is that life doesn't need to be navigated with lessons. You can just do it intuitively. After all, you only need to achieve autonomy from your parents, find a moderately satisfying job, form a relationship, perhaps raise some children, watch the onset of mortality in your parents' generation and eventually in your own, until one day a fatal illness starts gnawing at your innards and you calmly go to the grave, shut the coffin and are done with the self-evident business of life.