Yuxiang Wei

“That the Hawkings were eccentric, even odd, was well known; that they were aloof, convinced of their own intellectual superiority over the rest of the human race, was also widely recognized in St Albans, where they were regarded with a mixture of suspicion and awe. There were upsets and outbursts and there had been tensions in the air at the time of our engagement and the wedding, but these I took as part of the general tenor of family life. I had no substantial reason to complain of the way they treated me. Indeed, as I told Herman, they always seemed delighted to see Stephen and me, and always welcomed us warmly to Hillside Road.”
― Jane Hawking, Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen

“I had to choose my words carefully in explaining how the American-inspired monetarist policies of the Thatcher government – which had been in power for the whole of Tim’s lifetime – were destroying our already overloaded, free NHS. The truth was that in encouraging a new self-seeking materialism, those policies were destroying not just the health service and our educational system, but the very fabric of society. Indeed Mrs Thatcher had denied the existence of society: for her it consisted of nothing more than a set of individuals with no sense of common purpose. It was an unfortunate time to be ill, unemployed, very young, elderly or otherwise socially disadvantaged.”
― Jane Hawking, Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen

“Good listeners are no less rare or important than good communicators. Here, too, an unusual degree of confidence is the key—a capacity not to be thrown off course by, or buckle under the weight of, information that may deeply challenge certain settled assumptions. Good listeners are unfussy about the chaos which others may for a time create in their minds; they’ve been there before and know that everything can eventually be set back in its place. The”
― Alain de Botton, The Course of Love

“For the Romantic, it is only the briefest of steps from a glimpse of a stranger to the formulation of a majestic and substantial conclusion: that he or she may constitute a comprehensive answer to the unspoken questions of existence. The”
― Alain de Botton, The Course of Love