Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.

It struck me that distant cities are designed precisely so you can know where you came from.

I have the most charmed, most - I feel entirely blessed and lucky that I have the life that I have.

I am of the opinion, and even more so the older I get, that it is more difficult to have hope than it is to despair. And I mean this in the sense that in order to have hope you must acknowledge the despair and then you have to get beyond it. Taken from a radio interview given on BBC Radio 4's Open Book

We have to listen to other people's stories. That's the thing. And that's the only way that we eventually get to know ourselves.

I’m not interested in blind optimism, but I’m very interested in optimism that is hard-won, that takes on darkness and then says, ‘This is not enough.’ But it takes time, more time than we can sometimes imagine, to get there. And sometimes we don’t.

Even if you're going to die, you might as well die pretty.