If we were entirely sane, if madness did not have a serious grip on one side of us, other people's tragedies would hold a great deal less interest fo… - Alain de Botton

The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the constraints of reality.

We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be the inferiors of the virgin land they have replaced. We owe it to the worms and the trees that the building we cover them with will stand as promises of the highest and most intelligent kinds of happiness.

It is difficult when reading the description of certain fictional characters not at the same time to imagine the real-life acquaintances who they most closely, if often unexpectedly, resemble.