He didn’t really like travel, of course. He liked the idea of travel, and the memory of travel, but not travel itself.

Poets seem to write more easily about love than prose writers. For a start, they own that flexible ‘I’…. Then again, poets seem able to turn bad love – selfish, shitty love – into good love poetry. Prose writers lack this power of admirable, dishonest transformation. We can only turn bad love into prose about bad love. So we are envious (and slightly distrustful) when poets talk to us of love.

I don't believe in God, but I miss him.

Irony - The modern mode: either the devil’s mark or the snorkel of sanity.

He didn’t really like travel, of course. He liked the idea of travel, and the memory of travel, but not travel itself.

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.

It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others.