we must be precise with love, its language and its gestures. If it is to save us, we must look at it as clearly as we should learn to look at death

That's one of the central problems of history, isn't it, sir? The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us.

Grief seems at first to destroy not just all patterns, but also to destroy a belief that a pattern exists.

The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.

[Flaubert] didn’t just hate the railway as such; he hated the way it flattered people with the illusion of progress. What was the point of scientific advance without moral advance? The railway would merely permit more people to move about, meet and be stupid together.

But I’ve been turning over in my mind the question of nostalgia, and whether I suffer from it. I certainly don’t get soggy at the memory of some childhood knickknack; nor do I want to deceive myself sentimentally about something that wasn’t even true at the time—love of the old school, and so on. But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions—and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives—then I plead guilty.

When you are writing fiction your task is to reflect the fullest complications of the world