“Maturity: knowing where you’re crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.”

Most of what makes a book ‘good’ is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.

Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others.

We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability.

Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.

These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world.

In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer’s words, to turn pain into knowledge.

How do the stems connect to the roots?’ ‘Where is the mist coming from?’ ‘Why does one tree seem darker than another?’ These questions are implicitly asked and answered in the process of sketching.

As victims of hurt, we frequently don’t bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.

There are selections so acute that they come to define a place, with the result that we can no longer travel through that landscape without being reminded of what a great artist noticed there.

Socrates, on being insulted in the marketplace, asked by a passerby, “Don’t you worry about being called names?” retorted, “Why? Do you think I should resent it if an ass had kicked me?

Although I don’t believe in God, Bach’s music shows me what a love of God must feel like.

When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I’m basically the child of Richard Dawkins.

The challenge of modern relationships: how to prove more interesting than the other’s smartphone.

William James once made an acute point about the relationship between happiness and expectation. He argued that satisfaction with ourselves does not require us to succeed in every endeavour.

Mental health: having enough safe places in your mind for your thoughts to settle.

One’s doing well if age improves even slightly one’s capacity to hold on to that vital truism: “This too shall pass.

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

We lost the American colonies because we lacked the statesmanship to know the right time and the manner of yielding what is impossible to keep.

Anyone who spends time on the road knows there’s something special about being in the middle of Utah or Nebraska – you sit with it, and there’s a peace about it. You can go left or right, and it opens up all kinds of doors. You take your own path.

I do not, as you know, take sufficient interest in dress to be able to describe the new fashions. Dress is a bore.

It’s all about knowing the balance, because I like to remain somewhat of a mystery. You need to have that, you know what I mean?

No man knows till he experiences it, what it is like to feel his own life-blood drawn away into the woman he loves.

The more you know, the more you see

When you face a crisis, you know who your true friends are.