We seem incapable of looking at buildings or pieces of furniture without tying them to the historical and personal circumstances of our viewing; as a… - Alain de Botton

Once we are involved in a relationship, there is no longer any such thing as a minor detail.

Reading Proust nearly silenced Virginia Woolf. She loved his novel, but loved it rather too much. There wasn’t enough wrong with it — a crushing recognition when one considers Walter Benjamin’s assessment of why people become writers: because they are unable to find a book already written that they are completely happy with.

The moral? That life can be a stranger substance than a cliche life, that goldfinches should occasionally do things differently from their parents, and that there are persuasive reasons for calling a loved one Plouplou, Missou, or poor little wolf.