“Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.”

“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.”

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

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

“Writing a book has about it some of the anxiety of telling a joke and having to wait several years to know whether or not it was funny.”

“Life seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another--which is not to say that we should never strive to overcome any of our anxieties or fulfil any of our desires, but rather to suggest that we should perhaps build into our strivings an awareness of the way our goals promise us a respite and a resolution that they cannot, by definition, deliver.”