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So if you check your texts often while trying to work, you aren’t only losing the little bursts of time you spend looking at the texts– you are also losing the time it takes to refocus afterwards, which can be much longer.

Ruins—antique ruins at least—are what is left when history has moved on. They are no longer at the mercy of history, only of time. (p. 207).

The idea is to generate paperwork. The word could hardly be more apt. Paper is work. Paper is the big employer. Someone fills out a form (in triplicate), someone files one copy, the other copy goes somewhere else to be filed by someone else, the third is retained by the customer for his records. The most insignificant transaction must be scrupulously recorded and logged, filed and stored, even, on occasion, retrieved. On a trip to Libya, p. 183.

At the moment false claims spread on social media far faster than the truth, because of the algorithms that spread outraging material faster and further.

It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one's time in looking for the sacred Emperor in the low-class tea-shops.

I had to be on my own, just so that I would not feel as alone. (p. 201).

Once you turn forty...the whole world is water off a duck’s back. Once you turn forty you realize that life is there to be wasted. (p. 165).

I should have been happy—I was being paid to be here—but happiness does not respond to that kind of imperative; it is no good telling yourself you should be happy. (p. 225).

The more you covet something, the more certain it is that you’ll lose it, and the more devastating the loss will be when it happens—which it will. (p. 216).

Should a person on returning from the city discover his house to be in flames, let him examine well the change which he has received from the chair-carrier before it is too late; for evil never travels alone.

The best way to learn was by looking, to become articulate in the language of sight. The eye could learn to look after itself. (p. 180).

Although there exist many thousand subjects for elegant conversation, there are persons who cannot meet a cripple without talking about feet.