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.

The past is our ultimate privacy; we pile it up, year by year, decade by decade, it stows itself away, with its perverse random recall system.

The consideration of change over the century is about loss, though I think that social change is gain rather than loss.

I rather like getting away from fiction.

You learn a lot, writing fiction.

Wars are fought by children. Conceived by their mad demonic elders, and fought by boys.

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