Later on in life, you expect a bit of rest, don't you? You think you deserve it. I did, anyway. But then you begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life's business.

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.

Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it’s still the eyes we look at, isn’t it? That’s where we found the other person, and find them still.

What you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.

Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.

And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time’s malleability.

May you be ordinary, as the poet once wished the new-born baby.

Life seemed even more of a guessing game than usual.

I thought of the things that had happened to me over the years, and of how little I had made happen.

Is there anything more plausible than a second hand?

you find yourself repeating, ‘They grow up so quickly, don’t they?’ when all you really mean is: time goes faster for me nowadays.

The mathematical giant [Gauss], who from his lofty heights embraces in one view the stars and the abysses …

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it the second time.

Real heroes are those who face death for a principle - say, to save the lives of others - without any promise of reward.

Old man with an old phone. That's never not funny.

You feel completely in control when you hear a wave of laughter coming back at you that you have caused.

Sometimes there are no good choices for government.

None seem to bear the imputation of supposed guilt with greater intolerance than such as are, on other occasions, obviously culpable of vice or crime.

He who is penitent is almost innocent.

I exist in a state of almost perpetual hysteria.

It is astonishing how many books I find there is no need for me to read at all.