I'm now an agnostic but I grew up on the King James version, which I'm eternally grateful for.

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.

I do not dream, I simply maintain an ever growing list of things I will do and things that I won't.

Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still, it is never complete.

For me, marriage is a grotesque, unforgiving, clunky contrivance. Yet society pushes it as a shimmering ideal.

The hero, in living her own life, in being true to herself; radiates a light by which others may see their own way.

Let's just keep asking ourselves this question: 'Is what I'm about to do strengthening the web of connections, or is it weakening it?'

Grace! 'tis a charming Sound, Harmonious to my Ear! Heav'n with the Echo shall resound, And all the Earth shall hear.

The state (the U.S. Constitution) has not the right to leave every man free to profess and embrace whatever religion he may desire.

The pressures, I don't really like to think about the pressures, I like to solve them, you know what I mean. I could sit here and complain about pressures but nobody wants to hear about pressures.

I'll be at charges for a looking-glass And entertain a score or two of tailors To study fashions to adorn my body: Since I am crept in favor with myself, I will maintain it with some little cost.

Ads need to be little pieces of entertainment.