Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how to have a successful life. Some of these suggestions are deeply unhelpful to our own projects and priorities - and we should take care.

It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is also in many ways a conflict about status: it's a war between two peoples who feel deeply humiliated by the other, who want the other to respect them. Battles over status can be even more intractable than those over land or water or oil.

I'm also interested in the modern suggestion that you can have a combination of love and sex in a marriage - which no previous society has ever believed.

I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.

Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.

In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day's work for a writer. You can't put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well.

I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.

Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how to have a successful life. Some of these suggestions are deeply unhelpful to our own projects and priorities - and we should take care.

Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentially for reasons of status: for not showing them respect, for humiliating them.

I was uncomfortable writing fiction. My love was the personal essay, rather than the novel.

What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.

Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.

We are certainly influenced by role models, and if we are surrounded by images of beautiful rich people, we will start to think that to be beautiful and rich is very important - just as in the Middle Ages, people were surrounded by images of religious piety.

We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.

A city like London is sociable in a sense that there are people gathering in bars and restaurants, concerts and lectures. Yet you can partake of all these experiences and never say hello to anyone new. And one of the things that all religions do is take groups of strangers into a space and say it is OK to talk to each other.

A gray V-neck pullover from Gap. I have 30 of them.

Advertising is - quite often - alive to our real needs. It's just the products on offer might not be the things that will help us satisfy them.

All tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people were waiting. It almost bankrupted him.

Among adults, we can admit that of course, characters are creations. They aren't real people.

As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers - and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.

As for despair, it comes about when I have been a fool and hate myself and despair of my personality. I am prone to gloom, but not depression as such.

Atheism is having a heyday in the born-again United States.

Emotional life is - alongside work - one of the great challenges of existence and is a theme that I keep returning to.

Everyone's more vulnerable than they seem, and I think men are more vulnerable. Once you get close to a man, the whole thing's a facade anyway. I think manhood is fragile.

I always feel that I am writing for somebody who is bright but impatient. Someone who doesn't have unlimited time. That is my sense of the reader. So I have got to get to the point.

I am a very aesthetic person.

I am always anxious.

I am not a foodie, thank goodness. I will eat pretty much anything. A lot of my friends are getting incredibly fussy about food and I see it as a bit of an affliction.

I assemble my ideas in pieces on a computer file, then gradually find a place for them on a piece of scaffolding I erect.

I do think that travel can be part of a journey of inner maturation, but you've got to do it right.

I don't want to say that our expectations of love are too high; it's just that if we're to meet them, we have to become a little more self-aware.

I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.

I fell in love with Norman Mailer's 'Of a Fire on the Moon', a description of the 1969 moon landing and the society that had produced NASA - and was inspired by him to begin a kind of anthropology of modern life.

I guess my overall life plan is to think about issues that concern me and try to use culture generally to make sense of them. I'm more worried that I'm going to die before I've had time.

I keep a picture of my beloved children close by. Also, water and plenty of pads and pens.

I know a lot about writing, but I don't know much about how other industries work. I've tried to use my naivety to my advantage.

I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.

I like the values associated with a medical family - common sense, being practical but also thoughtful.

I like working with people. I believe change can only come through collaboration.

I love novels where not much 'happens' but where the interest is in the ideas and analyses of characters.

I love the idea of a university as away from capitalist values, where people can do things that don't immediately have to pay their way. It's like a monastery in a way, and that beautiful refuge has been destroyed by dogma about what this stuff is for.

I remember going to university, and the people who'd left home for the first time looked at the food and were horrified. Whereas, my view was that if it was vaguely edible, then it's fine.

I see religion as a storehouse of lots of really good ideas that a secular world should look at, raid, and learn from.

I tell my children what I think myself: That religion is not necessarily convincing, but it is still interesting and not to be laughed at or denigrated.

I think I have grown impatient with just being a writer.

I think a certain degree of pessimism is actually helpful to love.

I think it is very possible that my deeper character is not very English.

I think of myself as quite a shy person. But when I'm curious about something, I'll go quite far to satisfy my curiosity.