You have to be afraid for it to count as bravery.

There was some sadness in how that could happen, falling out of love with something that had shaped you. Or even people who had.

The military preferred - invariably - those who could be readily defined, assigned roles, understood, and controlled.

My youngest brother had a wonderful schtick from some time in high school, through to graduating medicine. He had a card in his wallet that read, ‘If I am found with amnesia, please give me the following books to read …’ And it listed half a dozen books where he longed to recapture that first glorious sense of needing to find out ‘what happens next’ … the feeling that keeps you up half the night. The feeling that comes before the plot’s been learned.

Lazy poets try to elicit a reader's response with words designed to tug at the heart.

It is always difficult, even with the best will in the world, to look back a long way and see anything resembling the truth.

You have to be afraid for it to count as bravery.