The best cure for one's bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.

There's a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.

The problem with clichés is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones...If...we are obliged to create our own language, it is because there are dimensions to ourselves absent from clichés, which require us to flout etiquette in order to convey with greater accuracy the distinctive timbre of our thought.

Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.

Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.

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.

Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.