It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.

Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.

to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap

Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the status hierarchy; they have attemptee, rather, to institute new kinds of hierarchies based on sets of values unrecognised by, and critical of, those of the majority.. They have provided us with persuasive and consoling reminders that there is more than one way of succeeding in life.

We don't really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped ... We suffer, therefore we think.

Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.

It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.