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.

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

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

I've always been fascinated by the operation of memory - the way in which it is not linear but fragmented, and its ambivalence.

I can walk about London and see a society that seems an absolutely revolutionary change from the 1950s, that seems completely and utterly different, and then I can pick up on something where you suddenly see that it's not.

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

Giving presents is one of the most possessive things we do, did you realize that? It's the way we keep a hold on other people. Plant ourselves in their lives.