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

It's very hard to respect people on holiday - everybody looks so silly at the beach, it makes you hate humanity - but when you see people at their work they elicit respect, whether it's a mechanic, a stonemason or an accountant.

Marriage: a deeply peculiar and ultimately unkind thing to inflict on anyone one claims to care for.

You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.

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

Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpredictable soil of medieval Europe, modern populations have nonetheless shown a remarkable capacity to feel that neither who they are nor what they have is quite enough.