“The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.”

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.

Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.

The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things

Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own – but that we could never have described on our own.

There’s a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.

Yet often, they know but just don’t care. So the task of serious journalism isn’t just to lay out truths. It is to make vital truths compelling to a big audience.

Those who divorce aren’t necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.

People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.

Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.

An onion can make people cry but there’s never been a vegetable that can make people laugh.

Crying is a very important part of human emotion as it helps us to vent out deep-buried thoughts or feelings.

You said you liked me smiling, then why did you leave me crying?

People have said ‘don’t cry’ to other people for years and years, and all it has ever meant is ‘I’m too uncomfortable when you show feelings.

Let’s create together, laugh together, cry together, sing together, dance together.

Whenever death may surprise us, let it be welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear and another hand reaches out to take up our arms.

I cried over beauty, I cried over pain, and the other time I cried because I felt nothing. I can’t help it. I’m just a cliché of myself.

All of a sudden to get all of this attention, and to be away from home and working all the time was hard. I was on planes all the time. I didn’t see my friends. I cried a lot. It was quite terrifying.