I still occasionally need to struggle but I now fear it less. The weapons I fight it with are also my consolations: books, music, food, wine, nature.

The world of the terminally ill is the world of neither the living nor the dead. I have watched others since I watched my father, and always with a sense of their strangeness. They sit and speak, and are spoken to, and listen, and even smile, but in spirit they have already moved away from us and there is no way we can enter their shadowy no-man’s-land.

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.

When I heard, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, I thought, Did he fall or was he pushed?

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

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.

Murder is the unique crime, the only one for which we can never make reparation to the victim.