Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored.

We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.

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

It's very hard to respect people on holiday - everybody looks so silly at the beach, it makes you hate humanity - but when you see people at their work they elicit respect, whether it's a mechanic, a stonemason or an accountant.

The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.

Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.

The secular world is full of holes. We have secularized badly.