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

I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.

We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.

It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are.

The problem isn't so much finding good ideas (there is no shortage) as embedding the ones we have into everyday practice.

At the beginning of human history, as we struggled to light fires and to chisel fallen trees into rudimentary canoes, who could have predicted that long after we had managed to send men to the moon and areoplanes to Australasia, we would still have such trouble knowing how to tolerate ourselves, forgive our loved ones, and apologise for our tantrums?

There is always the option of being emotionally lazy, that is, of quoting.