Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.

The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children.

Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.

Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.

We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.

One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?

There is always the option of being emotionally lazy, that is, of quoting.