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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.

Alain de Botton

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Alain de Botton
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Trying
Conscious
Work
Pay
Stretch
Always
Fiction
Formal
Attention
Aspects
Littles
Surprised
Little
Boundaries
Many
Writers
Writing
Aspect

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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Year-end financial statements express a truth about office life which is no less irrefutable yet also, in the end, no less irrelevant or irritating than an evolutionary biologist's proud reminder that the purpose of existence lies in the propagation of our genes.
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Most of us still caged within careers chosen for us by our not entirely worldly 18-22 year old selves.
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Dreams reveal we never quite get 'over' anything: it's all still in there somewhere.
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How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?
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My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.
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We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
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The architects who benefit us most maybe those generous enough to lay aside their claims to genius in order to devote themselves to assembling graceful but predominantly unoriginal boxes. Architecture should have the confidence and the kindness to be a little boring.
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The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
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As victims of hurt, we frequently don't bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.
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I was uncomfortable writing fiction. My love was the personal essay rather than the novel.
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The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust's therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.
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to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap
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It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive when there is no one for us to hold or love.
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Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.
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We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.
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Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.
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Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.
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Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
Alain de Botton
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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
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We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
Alain de Botton