“Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.”

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

Politics is so difficult, it’s generally only people who aren’t quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.

We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.

A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough.

It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.

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

The best cure for one’s bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.

Most good thinking has its origin in fear.

One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?

Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone – and finding that that’s ok with them.

Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others – because it’s a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.

Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.

We are not always humiliated by failing; we are humiliated only if we first invest our pride and sense of worth in a given achievement and then do not reach it.

For paranoia about ‘what other people think’ : remember that only some hate, a very few love – and almost all just don’t care.

The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.

As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.

Actors aren’t stupid, mostly, and if there’s a sensibility and an aesthetic that a director’s going for, if you’re aware of that too, you can do things to help that.

A man obsessed: obsessed with perfection, sharing, aesthetics, taste, savoir-faire, and much more.

The aesthetic process decentres the specular relation with which ideology perpetuates its closed infinity.

The aesthetic effect is certainly imaginary; but this imaginary is not the reflection of the real, since it is the real of this reflection.

The best stroked putt in a lifetime does not bring the aesthetic satisfaction of a perfectly hit wood or iron shot.

Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism.

Even in past relationships, that I’m still a woman, I still have vulnerabilities even though my aesthetic feels strong, powerful and full of all of the wisdom in the world, I’m still growing and becoming.

[Being unique] gives so much privilege to people who can make it, rather than having some moral and aesthetic discussions.