“And I wondered, with mounting anxiety, What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?”

“The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness".”

“Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.”

“A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.”

“It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.”

“as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered.”

“Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.”