...not deciding to act would be identical with deciding not to act.

Grace has a grand laughter in it.

Vision sometimes comes in a memory.

We have opted for petty determinisms - childhood trauma, genetic inheritance, social conditioning, etc. - that have made us comparatively passive. We seem to prefer to find excuses - which are really nothing more than the embrace of determinism, a sort of Stockholm syndrome relative to whatever we can claim as limitation. I am fascinated by the more enabling self-understanding. It has helped me to find my way out of the cloying comforts that are offered by prevalent psychological models.

When things are taking their ordinary course, it is hard to remember what matters.

Somebody who had read Lila asked me, ‘Why do you write about the problem of loneliness?’ I said: ‘It’s not a problem. It’s a condition. It’s a passion of a kind. It’s not a problem. I think that people make it a problem by interpreting it that way.’ 

More generally, people who lived in a period when maternal, infant and childhood mortality were still high would have been tougher than most of us can imagine.