When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins.

A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which the consequences of our failures would necessarily cease to weigh upon us so heavily.

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

We accept the need to train extensively to fly a plane; but think instinct should be enough for marrying and raising kids.

One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.

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.

One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This too shall pass.