Equally, we require a collective past - hence the endless reinterpretations of history, frequently to suit the perceptions of the present.

I've always been fascinated by the operation of memory - the way in which it is not linear but fragmented, and its ambivalence.

We make choices but are constantly foiled by happenstance.

I'm not a historian but I can get interested - obsessively interested - with any aspect of the past, whether it's palaeontology or archaeology or the very recent past.

It seems to me that anyone whose library consists of a Kindle lying on a table is some sort of bloodless nerd.

The present hardly exists, after all-it becomes the past even as it happens. A tricky medium, time - and central to the concerns of fiction.

We all act as hinges-fortuitous links between other people.

The consideration of change over the century is about loss, though I think that social change is gain rather than loss.

We all need a past - that's where our sense of identity comes from.

Getting to know someone else involves curiosity about where they have come from, who they are.

The Photograph is concerned with the power that the past has to interfere with the present: the time bomb in the cupboard.

Long before the stars died the birds began to sing - cool rippling doves, loud cheery starlings, the long lilting trills of warblers and thrushes.

I know formidable women, dozens of them, women who fight and who win... Noble women. Heroic ones.

The saddest day hath gleams of light The darkest wave hath bright foam beneath it The twinkles o'er the cloudiest night Some solitary star to cheer it.

Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

I believe the gun has no power at all.

It's like my father always said to me, he said to me, he said, Roseanna Roseanadana, it's always something. If it isn't one thing--it's another! It's always something.

A person's worth in this world is estimated according to the value he puts on himself.

We call for a weapons embargo.

You've got a fairly good idea as to what the questions are going to be. But how to record the best answer is another matter.

After I started to understand the spiritual dimension of life, I understood the responsibilities you have as a husband, a father, a friend and a hockey player.