Mythology is much better stuff than history. It has form; logic; a message.

the days of our lives vanish utterly, more insubstantial than if they had been invented. Fiction can seem more enduring than reality.

I didn't want it to be a book that made pronouncements.

I am addicted to arrivals, to those innocent dawn moments from which history accelerates.

Equally, we require a collective past - hence the endless reinterpretations of history, frequently to suit the perceptions of the present.

I didn't write anything until I was well over 30.

And in another year everything will be different yet again. It is always like that, and always will be; you are forever standing on the brink, in a place where you cannot see ahead; there is nothing of which to be certain except what lies behind. This should be terrifying, but somehow it is not.