Each of us is leading a difficult life, and when we meet people we are seeing only a tiny part of the thinnest veneer of their complex, troubled existences. To practise anything other than kindness towards them, to treat them in any way save generously, is to quietly deny their humanity.

...there is a fine line between wishing to produce child-like astonishment and treating people like infants.

A diner having a row with a waiter in a swanky restaurant chills the blood in a way that a quarrel over a pizza order elsewhere would never do. Compassion is rarely the custom of the privileged.

We're terrible at realising what goes on in other people's heads because we are trapped inside our own.

Liberating but hard to remember we're just bit-parts in the lives of people we know, who care very little for our secrets

There are things in your life which you are in control of, and those you're not. You need to not care about those things which you're not in control of, and when you come to really understand that, you can go from being really upset about something to that lovely feeling of being a kid where everything is okay.

Dull magic is a collection of tricks: great magic should sting.