Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights:#1 I am sitting on the front doorstep of my little house with a cup of coffee, looking down the valley at my extraordinary view of nothing. It is wonderful. I look at it, and with fewer things to look at, I see better.#2 We all imagine that we want peace and quiet, but we rarely seek opportunities to enjoy it. We romanticize silence on the one hand, but feel that it is terrifying and dangerous to our mental health on the other.#3 I had an unusually noisy childhood, with six children born within six and a half years of each other. My parents were deeply sociable and engaged as parents, and they allowed us to be highly articulate, contentious, and witty.#4 My parents were very politically engaged, and I remember the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the Profumo affair in 1963, and the Equal Opportunities Act in 1973, which I was expelled from the House of Commons for disrupting.