We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it).

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

We are sensitized by the books we read. And the more books we read, and the deeper their lessons sink into us, the more pairs of glasses we have. And those glasses enable us to see things we would have otherwise missed.

A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.

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

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

Unrequited love may be painful, but it is safely painful, because it does not involve inflicting damage on anyone but oneself, a private pain that is as bittersweet as it is self-induced. But as soon as love is reciprocated, one must be prepared to give up the passivity of simply being hurt and take on the responsibility of perpetrating hurt oneself.