“Once upon a time, loss of love, rejection, weakness and loss of territory all meant death. Now it just feels that way.”

“We are all hungry for love, acceptance and belonging. Rejection can still feel like death.”

“Happiness requires a balance. If you feel rejected, you need to pursue love with dignity. If you feel put down you need to restore your dignity in an attractive fashion.”

“The poorer your self-esteem and the lower your self-confidence, the more easily negative feelings can overwhelm ordinary good sense.”

“Feelings can have a life of their own and you have very little direct control over them, except perhaps to make them worse.”

“Life isn't just addition and subtraction. There's also the accumulation, the multiplication, of loss, of failure.”

“Someone once said that his favourite times in history were when things were collapsing, because that meant something new was being born. Does this make any sense if we apply it to our individual lives? To die when something new is being born - even if that something new is our very own self? Because just as all political and historical change sooner or later disappointments, so does adulthood. So does life. Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be.”