The world is full of people who have lost faith: politicians who have lost faith in politics, social workers who have lost faith in social work, schoolteachers who have lost faith in teaching and, for all I know, policemen who have lost faith in policing and poets who have lost faith in poetry. It's a condition of faith that it gets lost from time to time, or at least mislaid.

Not so much two ships passing in the night as two ships sailing together for a time but always bound for different ports.

Childhood is the one prison from which there's no escape, the one sentence from which there's no appeal. We all serve our time.

Generosity is a virtue for individuals, not governments. When governments are generous it is with other people’s money, other people’s safety, other people’s future.

Youth goes caparisoned in immortality.

What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.

Feel, he told himself, feel, feel, feel. Even if what you feel is pain, only let yourself feel.