You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them.

The more dignity is widely and freely available in a society, the less people want to be famous.

Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.

Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.

Rather than saying 'I hate mess', it might draw more compassion to say, 'mess terrifies me as a harbinger of catastrophe'.

Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.

Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically teaches viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will; that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves.