Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.

I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.

We might have been ready to offer sympathy, but in actuality there were stronger reasons to want to congratulate her for having found such a powerful motive to feel sad. We should have envied her for having located someone without whom she so firmly felt she could not survive, beyond the gate let along in a bare student bedroom in a suburb of Rio. If she had been able to view her situation from a sufficient distance, she might have been able to recognise this as one of the high points in her life.

Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom we know nothing. Romances are never as pure as those we imagine during long train journeys, as we secretly contemplate a beautiful person who is gazing out of the window – a perfect love story interrupted only when the beloved looks back into the carriage and starts up a dull conversation about the excessive price of the on-board sandwiches with a neighbour or blows her nose aggressively into a handkerchief.

You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them.

Every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.

We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.