I do think it is harder to acknowledge our strengths, or to forgive ourselves and each other for our shortcomings, when there has not been a result we can all agree on. And it is certainly impossible to imagine forgiving the enemy while their animus remains undefeated. Yet war doesn't end with armistice, it only ends with forgiveness and reconciliation.

Psychiatry in this place is like serving an in-flight meal in the middle of a plane crash. If I wanted to make you well, as a doctor, I should be giving you a parachute, not a cheese-and-pickle sandwich.

There was no quick grief for Andrew because he had been so slowly lost. First from my heart, then from my mind, and only finally from my life.

To be well in your mind you have first to be free.

And thus love makes fools of us all.

I think that there's something extremely beautiful about the Olympic ideal and its motto - 'Swifter, higher, stronger' - it's such a beautiful motto, and it celebrates everything which is the antithesis of death and dissolution and entropy.

[My maternal grandmother ] was a teacher in London and elsewhere during the war, although the children she taught were not the "lost children" who feature in the novel - those come from my research.