Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.

Books are not about passing the time. They're about other lives. Other worlds.

Of course my standards are out of date! That's why they're called standards.

There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world. Imagine that. Per person. This means that if the time scale is diminished in proportion to that of space it would be quite possible for the whole story of Greece and Rome to be played out between farts.

[talking about the Holocaust] 'But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained. And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.' 'But this is History. Distance yourselves. Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground. We don't see it, and because we don't see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past. And one of the historian's jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be... even on the Holocaust.

So boring you fall asleep halfway through her name.

I'm not "happy" but I'm not unhappy about it.