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.

There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.

It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.

Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own - but that we could never have described on our own.

There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.

In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the belief, but because he has a need for it. Desperate needs bring about a hallucination of their solution: thirst hallucinates water, the need for love hallucinates a prince or princess. The oasis complex is never a complete delusion: the man in the desert does see something on the horizon. It is just that the palms have withered, the well is dry, and the place is infected with locusts.

The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust's therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.