We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame; just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.

We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.

The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort.

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

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.

Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.

Our sense of what is valuable will hence be radically distorted if we must perpetually condemn as tedious everything we lack, simply because we lack it.