We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse: we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard.

Unless I am a part of everything I am nothing.

It seems to me that anyone whose library consists of a Kindle lying on a table is some sort of bloodless nerd.

History unravels; circumstances, following their natural inclination, prefer to remain ravelled.

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

I didn't think I had anything particular to say, but I thought I might have something to say to children.

But who knows their own child? You know bits - certain predictable reactions, a handful of familiar qualities. The rest is impenetrable. And quite right too. You give birth to them. You do not design them.