“There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.”

What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.

Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.

It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.

Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind.

The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.

Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn’t find anyone to talk to.

A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.

The problem isn’t so much finding good ideas (there is no shortage) as embedding the ones we have into everyday practice.

We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame; just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.

The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.

In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.

I passionately believe that’s it’s not just what you say that counts, it’s also how you say it – that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.

Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.

Literature is the greatest reality simulator – a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.

The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along.

The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can’t accept that.

Doubt can motivate you, so don’t be afraid of it. Confidence and doubt are at two ends of the scale, and you need both. They balance each other out.

Let there be balance in every phase of life – unification instead of friction.

Tall and straight I may appear, but I will always be Ada inside. A crooked little person trying to tell the truth. The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes

I am not a yogi yet, but I aspire to have more balance in my life.

It’s the fine balance of caffeine and alcohol that bookends my days

Animals can always read your vibration, and if you are intent on empowering your life, they will often gift you by making special melodies of sound to balance your chakras and tune up your body.

When you perceive a truth, look for the balancing truth.

Balance in the body is the foundation for balance in life.