‘A room should be brighter in winter, but dimmer in summer; it is then appropriately cool, and does not attract insects. But people will light the lights, then switch on an electric fan to combat the heat. The very thought annoys me.’

‘The parlor may have its charms, but the Japanese toilet truly is a place of spiritual repose.’

‘Western paper turns away the light, while our paper seems to take it in, to envelop it gently, like the soft surface of a first snowfall. It gives off no sound when it is crumpled or folded, it is quiet and pliant to the touch as the leaf of a tree.’

‘It’s always important to remember that a lot of sex is inconsequential and some if it is very tedious indeed.’

‘When it is not appropriate to seek forgiveness from a specific person, a personal commitment to improve our conduct in future can, in my experience, facilitate self-forgiveness.’

‘I am dishonest about sex. This is not always intentional. Rather, it comes from a struggle to know the truth about my sexuality and tell it.’

‘Motherly love is a damaging concept only when it is sequestered and exclusionary and becomes a partitioning of love to particular people in a particular bond. When extended beyond the parent-child relationship, it has much to teach us…’

‘A crude insistence that only the self-loving can love others risks casting adults who were once abandoned or neglected as children, people with mental illnesses, addicts and people belonging to stigmatized groups... as categorically unable to love others...’

‘One of the most powerful tools I have used to amend my most self-harming behaviours is to imagine what I would feel or say to my siblings or a friend if they were doing the same, and then to take my own advice.'