“In sex women are largely guided by their sensible bodies but men are driven crazy by their feverish minds. Men love to think and talk about sex; women enjoy it while it lasts, if they can, and have little interest in pre-match build-up or post-match analysis.”

“And a sensible work strategy might be: surrender to the task but not to the taskmaster, become absorbed in the work itself but never absorb the work ethos.”

“It may well be that an analysis of figures would reveal a law - the duration of a marriage is inversely proportional to the cost of the wedding. Or, to put it another way, any union celebrated with personalized toasting flutes is doomed.”

“However, the serious seeker of detachment will have to embrace the Holy Trinity of Ss - Solitude, Stillness and Silence - and reject the new religion of Commotionism, which believes that the meaning of life is constant company, movement and noise.”

“Straight people get married so that they can have sex. Gay men have sex so that they can get friends. ”

“Proust is famous for his rhapsodies on hawthorns but his book has only three of these, whereas there are thirteen scenes in brothels, one especially detailed episode running to more than forty pages. Few critics mention the brothels but they are more fun than the hawthorns.”

“Being constantly the hub of a network of potential interruptions provides the excitement and importance of crisis management. As well as the false sense of efficiency in multitasking, there is the false sense of urgency in multi-interrupt processing.”