Books should be full of stuff you could never say to people in public. - Alain de Botton

It was as if a vital evolutionary advantage had been bestowed centuries ago on those members of the species who lived in a state of concern about what was to happen next. These ancestors might have failed to savour their experiences appropriately, but they had at least survived and shaped the character of their descendants, while their more focused siblings, at one with the moment and with the place where they stood, had met violent ends on the horns of unforeseen bison.

When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.

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