Courage is a muscle that develops through use. It's no use waiting for some inner fire to conveniently become apparent at the moment of crisis - that's cartoon stuff.

We're often told that we live in a globalized world, and we talk about it all the time, but people don't stop to think about what it means.

Looking after a very sick child was the Olympics of parenting.

A scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.

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

I was astonished to find that the positions my grandfather had defended were now overgrown and entangled with trees and thorns. I suppose I had developed a sense of reverence for the locations he described in his memoirs and letters - the forts and the high emplacements. I had expected them to have been preserved in some way.

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.