Living your life according to what everyone else might think of you is to cede control of who you are. It is to outsource your identity to a bunch of strangers who do not know you.

I began to realise that if I never achieved anything outwardly ever again, I would still exist. The voice in my head is not who I am.

That’s not to say forward planning is pointless, but unless you can actively contribute something practical towards your future growth right now, there’s no point worrying about the things you can’t yet control.

You can have and do and be anything you want. But you refuse to want because then you’ll have to do and be.

We’ve been told that success is to be known by others, when in truth the most meaningful success is to know ourselves.

That there is no one on this big, wide planet who can understand the you-ness of you more than you.

The danger of the mind to trick one into thinking all the bad things we imagine are facts when in truth, they are just thoughts which are, in turn, a product of our experience. We exist separately from our thoughts.

But other people’s money has a narcotic quality. It makes you high. It makes you forget your misgivings. You feel privileged, somehow exceptional to have been invited, as though the tiniest fleck of gold leaf from a giant glittering statue has smudged off on you and you can kid yourself you belong. That you are, for a single night, indubitably One of Them.

One half of the table was arguing with the other half about the rights and wrongs of the Iraq war, in that semi-detached, earnest way that moneyed people do, always safe in the knowledge no political outcome will really affect them.

That’s the problem with charm. It means you get away with stuff. It means you never have to develop a real character because no one remembers to look for one. They’re too busy basking in the glow of your attention. They’re too busy being impressed.