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.

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.

We all need a past - that's where our sense of identity comes from.

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

I have had to empty two family homes during the last few years - first, the house that had been my grandmothers since 1923, and then my own country home, which we had lived in for over twenty years.

If people don't read, that's their choice; a lifelong book habit may itself be some sort of affliction.

It seems to me that everything that happens to us is a disconcerting mix of choice and contingency.