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"A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It's almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments."
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"Copywriters, journalists, mainstream authors, ghostwriters, bloggers and advertising creatives have as much right to think of themselves as good writers as academics, poets, or literary novelists."

"A true piece of writing sets you free."

"Through writing, an author opens the window of his heart through which a reader can see the inner self of the author."

"Writing means not just staring ugliness in the face, but finding a way to embrace it."

"What is your advice to young writers? "Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes."
Explore more quotes by Alain de Botton

"We never envy another's achievement more than when we know very little about how it was attained."

"We are properly ready for marriage when we are strong enough to embrace a life of frustration."

"The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word "luxury."

"Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfAated but life-enhancing thoughts."

"He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on professional matters, then promptly stop in his tracks to peer inquisitively into his guest's eyes for signs of boredom or mockery, being intelligent enough to be unable fully to believe in his own claims to significance. He might, in a past life, have been a particularly canny and sharp-tongued royal advisor."

"What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty."

"A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one's life. There is an urge to say, 'I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me."

"Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for making money."

"Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpredictable soil of medieval Europe, modern populations have nonetheless shown a remarkable capacity to feel that neither who they are nor what they have is quite enough."

"Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains."
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