“What we call the present is given shape by an accumulation of the past.”

“With each passing moment I'm becoming part of the past. There is no future for me, just the past steadily accumulating.”

“What we needed were not words and promises but a steady accumulation of small realities.”

“Reality's just the accumulation of ominous prophecies come to life. All you have to do is open a newspaper on any given day to weigh the good news versus the bad news, and you'll see what I mean.”

“The past and the present, might we say, go like this. The future is a maybe. Yet we look back on the darkness that obscures the path that brought us fair, we only come up with another indefinite maybe. The only thing we perceive with any clarity is the present moment, and even that just passes by.”

“There are lots of things we never understand, no matter how many years we put on, no matter how much experience we accumulate.”

“I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of -- that a certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect...I find that encouraging.”