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

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

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

the days of our lives vanish utterly, more insubstantial than if they had been invented. Fiction can seem more enduring than reality.

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.

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.

Mythology is much better stuff than history. It has form; logic; a message.