We are lucky, even the worst of us, for daylight comes.

Know thyself,’ said Socrates. Know thyself,’ said Sappho, ‘and make sure that the Church never finds out.

There are times when it will go so wrong that you will barely be alive, and times when you realise that being barely alive, on your own terms, is better than living a bloated half-life on someone else's terms.

I would rather have regrets of excess than regrets of denial.

For me, the most painful thing is the thought of shelves without books. This is the problem with the digital thing. I do not want to see it on electronic. I do not want to see all of those indices on Kindle. I don't want this physical object to disappear, because when it's there and it's present, it's continually suggesting new relationships in a way that an electronic index couldn't.

They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it?

If I can't stay where I am, and I can't, then I will put all that I can into the going.