Alain de Botton
Alain de Botton
Alain de Botton, FRSLis a Swiss-born, British-based self-help philosopher and public speaker. His books and television programmes discuss various contemporary subjects and themes, emphasizing philosophy's relevance to everyday life. At 23, he published Essays in Love, which went on to sell two million copies. Other bestsellers include How Proust Can Change Your Life, Status Anxietyand The Architecture of Happiness...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth20 December 1969
writing simplicity belief
Being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say...but writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacious belief that the impassable prose is a hallmark of intelligence.
writing trying attention
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.
writing use naivety
I know a lot about writing, but I don't know much about how other industries work. I've tried to use my naivety to my advantage.
writing fiction uncomfortable
I was uncomfortable writing fiction. My love was the personal essay, rather than the novel.
writing what-matters records
As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.
teacher writing careers
An understandable hunger for ... potential clients tempts many [career counseling therapists] to overpromise, like creative writing teachers who, out of greed or sentimentality, sometimes imply that all of their students could one day produce worthwhile literature, rather than frankly acknowledging the troubling truth, anathema to a democratic society, that the great writer, like the contented worker, remains an erratic and anomalous event, ... immune to the methods of factory farming.
book writing sick
It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.
lonely book writing
Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.
writing sane
My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.
writing self careers
Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.
philosophy sadness writing
The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can't accept that.
believe thinking people
.. if you asked most people whether they believed in love or not, they’d probably say they didn’t. Yet that’s not necessarily what they truly think. It’s just the way they defend themselves against what they want. They believe in it, but pretend they don’t until they’re allowed to. Most people would throw away all their cynicism if they could. The majority just never gets the chance.
lonely book should
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.
home sky weather
We are sad at home and blame the weather and the ugliness of the buildings, but on the tropical island we learn that the state of the skies and the appearance of our dwellings can never on their own underwrite our joy nor condemn us to misery.