In youth we take egregious risks because death has no reality for us. Youth goes caparisoned in immortality. It is only in middle age that we are shadowed by the awareness of the transitoriness of life.

It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.

Early this morning, 1 January 2021, three minutes after midnight, the last human being to be born on earth was killed in a pub brawl in a suburb of Buenos Aires, aged twenty-five years, two months and twelve days.

If this were fiction, could even the most brilliant novelist contrive to make credible so short a period in which pride had been subdued and prejudice overcome?

the unforgivable was usually the most easily forgiven.

Human kindness is like a defective tap, the first gush may be impressive but the stream soon dries up.

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