I write in the novel's afterword that our recent wars "finish not with victory or defeat but with a calendar draw-down date and a presumption that we shall never be reconciled with the enemy".

I was carrying two cargoes. Yes, one of them was horror, but the other one was hope.

My whole life is my work.

Life is extremely short and you cannot dance to current affairs.

Sometimes we don't notice that someone is being brave, because they are only doing something that seems quite easy for us.

The future looks like gasoline. . . . crude oil . . . is the future before it has been refined. It is like a dream of the future, really, and like any dream it ends with a rude awakening.

Andrew had a gift for deepening the incision he began.