Our own choices might not be as good as those that are made for us.

I don't think you ever understand your life - not till it's finished and probably not then either. The more I live the less I seem to understand.

I never for a moment considered killing myself, because it wouldn't have achieved anything.

It's only after the change is fully formed that you can see what's happened.

It was too difficult. People weren't prepared to put in the hours on the donkey work - you know, dates and facts and so on. I think in retrospect my generation will be seen as a turning point. From now on there'll be a net loss of knowledge in Europe. The difference between a peasant community in fourteenth-century Iran and modern London, though, is that if with their meager resources the villagers occasionally slipped backward, it was not for lack of trying. But with us, here in England, it was a positive choice. We chose to know less.

It was entirely silent and I tried to breathe its peace.

You can't recall someone whose name has worn away.