We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.

We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.

The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can't accept that.

It should not be Illiers-Combray that we visit: a genuine homage to Proust would be to look at our world through his eyes, not look at his world through our eyes.

You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.

Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for making money.

I'm also interested in the modern suggestion that you can have a combination of love and sex in a marriage - which no previous society has ever believed.