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

Booking an act for my Dad's 70th birthday, I wanted a great act and went straight to John Archer- his reputation in the magic world is among the very best. I was so pleased he was able to do it, and he absolutely brought the house down. It was brilliant, hysterically funny, and perfectly pitched for the occasion. He made the evening. I'd recommend him unreservedly.

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.

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.

Few kids seek to learn a skill specifically designed to impress people unless they feel less than impressive themselves.