Choosing a spouse and a choosing career: the two great decisions for which society refuses to set up institutional guidance.

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

Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.

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

Though debts are condemned in the financial world, the world of friendship and love may perversely depend on well-managed debts.

Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.

Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.