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

Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.

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.

Never, ever become a writer. It's a nightmare.

People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.

It is this idea 'decency' should be attached to wealth -and 'indecency'' to poverty - that forms the core of one strand of skeptical complaint against the modern status-ideal. Why should failure to make money be taken as a sign of an unconditionally flawed human being rather than of a fiasco in one particular area if the far larger, more multifaceted, project of leading a good life? Why should both wealth and poverty be read as the predominant guides to an individual's morals ?

Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis of morality, or a sort of madness?