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.

I believe that the experience of childhood is irretrievable. All that remains, for any of us, is a headful of brilliant frozen moments, already dangerously distorted by the wisdoms of maturity.

Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms.

The Photograph is concerned with the power that the past has to interfere with the present: the time bomb in the cupboard.

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.

All history, of course, is the history of wars.