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

It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.

One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?

Life gives us no such handy markers - a storm comes, and far from this being a harbinger of death and collapse, during its course a person discovers love and truth, beauty and happiness, the rain lashing at the windows all the while.

Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.

We are sensitized by the books we read. And the more books we read, and the deeper their lessons sink into us, the more pairs of glasses we have. And those glasses enable us to see things we would have otherwise missed.

The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness".