In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day's work for a writer. You can't put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well.

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

Despite its maddeningly vague, inarticulate form, anxiety is almost always trying to tell you something useful and apposite.

It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.

Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.

Curiosity takes ignorance seriously - and is confident enough to admit when it's in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.

Writing a book has about it some of the anxiety of telling a joke and having to wait several years to know whether or not it was funny.