I didn't want it to be a book that made pronouncements.

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.

The thin line between good and evil lays in the decisions we make”.

Maintaining healthy forests is essential to those who make a living from the land and for those of us who use them for recreational purposes.

Unknowing ignorance is preferable to informed stupidity.

My hatred is a thousand times more powerful than all your good intentions.

Seek a reality deeper than the changing forms.

It's fascinating how much of our sense of attractiveness and feminine identity is bound up in our hair.

Roses are red, violets are blue, so are my balls thanks to you.

Luke gazed at Annabeth. "You knew. I almost killed you, but you knew . . ." "Shhh." Her voice trembled. "You were a hero at the end, Luke.

It's not just modern-day society that is liberal.

I don't think we can dignify documents dumped by Wikileaks and just assume that they're all accurate and true.