The problem with clichés is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones...If...we are obliged to create our own language, it is because there are dimensions to ourselves absent from clichés, which require us to flout etiquette in order to convey with greater accuracy the distinctive timbre of our thought.

People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft.

We may not agree with what religions are trying to teach us, but we can admire the institutional way in which they're doing it.

We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.

Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.

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

Perhaps because the origins of a certain kind of love lie in an impulse to escape ourselves and out weaknesses by an alliance with the beautiful and noble. But if the loved ones love us back, we are forced to return to ourselves, and are hence reminded of the things that had driven us into love in the first place. Perhaps it was not love we wanted after all, perhaps it was simply someone in whom to believe, but how can we continue to believe the the beloved now that they believe in us?