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.

There is psychological pleasure in this takeoff, too, for the swiftness of the plane’s ascent is an exemplary symbol of transformation. The display of power can inspire us to imagine analogous, decisive shifts in our own lives, to imagine that we, too, might one day surge above much that now looms over us.” P. 38-39

It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge.

A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.

People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.

Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.

We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame; just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.