“What was important wasn’t the fireworks, it was that we were together this evening, together in this place, looking up into the sky at the same time.”

I held the feeling in my heart; the urge to discuss it died out. There was all the time in the world. In the endless repetition of other nights, other mornings, this moment, too, might become a dream.

In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions much of one’s life history is etched in the senses.

No matter what, I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive.

When was it I realized that, on this truly dark and solitary path we all walk, the only way we can light is our own? Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely. Someday, without fail, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time.

Everything in life has some good in it. And when something awful happens, the goodness stands out even more–it’s sad, but that’s the truth.

I felt how important the simplest things were, like feeling proud, finding something funny, stretching yourself, retreating into yourself.

No matter where you are, you’re always a bit on your own, always an outsider.

Sometimes people put up walls, not to keep others out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.

I spent most of my time thinking, because I didn’t have enough energy to do anything else.

Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely.

Love is the kind of thing that’s already happening by the time you notice it, that’s how it works, and no matter how old you get, that doesn’t change. Except that you can break it up into two entirely distinct types — love where there’s an end in sight and love where there isn’t.

If you don’t say what you’re thinking, you end up lying when you really need to speak up.

It occurred to me that if I were a ghost, this ambiance was what I’d miss most: the ordinary, day-to-day bustle of the living. Ghosts long, I’m sure, for the stupidest, most unremarkable things.

You have the nicest window, you know? None of the others can even compete. It´s not flashy like the others, or bleary – your window gives of this nice, quiet light.

Was that what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities?

I really believe that no matter how old people get, they tend to change in certain ways depending on how people treat them – they change their colors.

I’m very interested in the early American history, the time when the country came together.

Amazing things happen when you pull individual pieces of information together into larger linked datasets: meaning emerges, as you produce facts from figures.

If you take out of your statutes, your constitution, your family life all that is taken from the Sacred Book, what would there be left to bind society together?

If we don’t hang together, by Heavens we shall hang separately

The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.

A great operation on the wrong patient is just as bad as a horrible operation on the right patient. So, you have to have all that together.

My brother and I are always trying to figure out a way to work again together.

I wrote about the life of a housing officer in Britain, in a pretty rough area of London. Maybe it was because I’m a big-mouth and an exhibitionist, and I’m slightly egotistical. All those things have to come together for a writer.