Relationships, like cars, should undergo regular services to make sure they are still roadworthy.

Human attention tends to be focused on the satisfactions relationships are hoped to bring, precisely because somehow they have not been truly satisfactory. And if they do satisfy, the price of this satisfaction has often been found to be unacceptable.

With every death, a world is disappearing.

We belong to talking, not what talking is about... Stop talking - and you are out. Silence equals exclusion.

A whole world is taken to the grave with the dead person; each one of us is unique and unrepeatable.

Civilisation, the orderly world in which we live, is frail. We are skating on thin ice. There is a fear of a collective disaster. Terrorism, genocide, flu, tsunamis.

Happiness needs one-upmanship.