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

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

Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how to have a successful life. Some of these suggestions are deeply unhelpful to our own projects and priorities - and we should take care.

Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.

The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.

Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as inherent & unbudgeable as those in food.

A simple problem of arithmetic: there are far more ambitions than there are grand destinies available.