Alain de Botton Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

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

“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.”

“The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can't accept that.”

“I think people want to get married to end their emotional uncertainty. In a way, they want to end powerful feelings, or certainly the negative ones.”

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

“I waste most of the day, then finally start to write around 3 P.M., totally disgusted with myself for my wasteful nature.”

“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.”

“Work is a way of bringing order to chaos, and there's a basic satisfaction in seeing that we are able to make something a little more coherent by the end of the day.”

“What bothers me is that there is so much emphasis on food, rather than gathering and meeting - so that there is all this effort in creating the right food, whereas the food is only a small part of whether the encounter is successful or not.”