“My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.”

It’s perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it’s perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.

Don’t despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don’t – surrender to events with hope.

The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others’ appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.

The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.

What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.

Serious journalists often imagine society is adrift because people don’t know certain things.

I think people want to get married to end their emotional uncertainty. In a way, they want to end powerful feelings, or certainly the negative ones.

A ‘good job’ can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.

Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as ‘doing nothing’.

One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.

All tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people were waiting. It almost bankrupted him.

When you look at the Moon, you think, ‘I’m really small. What are my problems?’ It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often.

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

Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.

Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn’t know rejection and humiliation so intimately.

The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do; the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.

Tell me what’s going on here. Why can i hear your voice inside my head and why did you say you came to school for me?” “i was tired of admiring your legs from a distance.

The Gospel is that Jesus Christ came to earth, lived the life we should have lived and died the death we should have died.

Caveat emptor is the only motto going, and the worst proverb that ever came from the dishonest stony-hearted Rome.

The presence of the trees was very strong…The big oaks stood so many, so massive in their other life, in their deep, rooted silence: the awe of them came on me, the religion.

… it came to me that what I had to do was to take pictures and concentrate upon people, only people, all kinds of people, people who paid me and people who didn’t.

Before this country came on the scene, for thousands of years people did things the same way. Within 200 years of the advent of this nation, men were walking on the moon, and I want us to recognize this is the kind of people that we are. We’re creative with a lot of ingenuity and a lot of energy.

I love you,nora. Whatever happens, promise me you’ll remember that. I don’t care why you came into my life,only that you did. I don’t remember all the things i did wrong. I remember what i did right, i remember you. You made my life meaningful. You made my life special.

I don’t want my kids to grow up with no father like I did. I came to the conclusion a while ago that you can work until midnight and not be finished or you can work until 6 or 7 and not be finished. I decided I’d rather work until 6 or 7.