No one wants to know how clever you are. They don't want an insight into your mind, thrilling as it might be. They want an insight into their own.

Being clever was when you looked at how things were and used the evidence to work out something new.

Watch the functioning of your own mind in a calm and detached manner so you can gain insight into your own behavior.

I went to boarding school, and then I went to Oxford, and I know how easy it is for certain groups of people to become wholly insulated from ordinary life.

I have very fond memories of swimming in Walden Pond when we lived in Boston. You'd swim past a log and see all these turtles sunning themselves. Slightly disturbing if you thought about how many more were swimming around your toes, but also rather wonderful.

Use your imagination, and you'll see that even the most narrow, humdrum lives are infinite in scope if you examine them with enough care.