Unless I am a part of everything I am nothing.

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.

Maggie wasn't without her concerns, though. "What if he's crazy?""Yeah, that's a definite possibility, " he agreed."What if he's not your type?""Then we'll only hook up in dark places.

Along with individual responsibility goes some societal responsibility to enable young people and their parents to do what they need to do. Otherwise, what is a society?

A university is a city of ideas, and we're grateful you became citizens of our city.

One cannot weep for the entire world, it is beyond human strength. One must choose.

Growing up, I was never the kind of girl to dream about wedding dresses and pretty houses.

To understand what the outside of an aquarium looks like, it's better not to be a fish.

If we have true love with sympathy and patient labor, we shall not go about scrutinizing our neighbor's shortcomings.

As a society we should be encouraging people out of the debt-culture mindset, not promoting it.

If we get it wrong about Jesus, it doesn’t matter what else we get right.

I had never considered marriage, but I had an open mind, and I was to learn after a brief try at it that most open minds should be closed for repairs.