She was learning, quite late, what many people around her appeared to have known since childhood that life can be perfectly satisfying without major achievements.

Country manners. Even if somebody phones up to tell you your house is burning down, they ask first how you are.

You cannot let your parents anywhere near your real humiliations.

Moments of kindness and reconciliation are worth having, even if the parting has to come sooner or later.

People are curious. A few people are. ... They will put things together, knowing all along that they may be mistaken. You see them going around with notebooks, scraping the dirt off gravestones, reading microfilm, just in the hope of seeing this trickle in time, making a connection, rescuing one thing from the rubbish.

Few people, very few, have a treasure, and if you do you must hang onto it. You must not let yourself be waylaid, and have it taken from you.

In my own work, I tend to cover a lot of time and to jump back and forward in time, and sometimes the way I do this is not very straightforward.