Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.

Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.

Our sense of what is valuable will hence be radically distorted if we must perpetually condemn as tedious everything we lack, simply because we lack it.

Bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design. It is an example expressed through materials of the same tendencies which in other domains will lead us to marry the wrong people, choose inappropriate jobs and book unsuccessful holidays: the tendency not to understand who we are and what will satisfy us.

The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.

One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.

Choosing a spouse and a choosing career: the two great decisions for which society refuses to set up institutional guidance.