We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations.

Doing what you do well is death. Your duty is to keep trying to do things that you don't do well, in the hope of learning.

The past beats inside me like a second heart.

...being alone with him was like being in a room which someone had just violently left

I'm full of self-doubt. I doubt everything I do. Everything I do is a failure.

The trouble with you, Vic," he said, "is that you think of the world as a sort of huge museum with too many visitors allowed in.

We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations.