To eat, teeth must meet.

Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.

All art is the struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.

Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.

Almost anything that consoles us is a fake.

If we ignore the prior work of attention and notice only the emptiness of the moment of choice we are likely to identify freedom with the outward movement since there is nothing else to identify it with. But if we consider what the work of attention is like, how continuously it goes on, and how imperceptibly it builds up structures of value round about us, we shall not be surprised that at crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already over.

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.

Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. To be damned is for one's ordinary everyday mode of consciousness to be unremitting agonising preoccupation with self.

Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.

I think being a woman is like being Irish... Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the same.