“There’s always an end. But the end is always the beginning of something else. The periods we write into our lives are always provisional, in one way or another.”

“There will always be new opposites, class struggles and uprisings. History has no ending.”

“We’re always being made promises,’ she said. ‘You make them yourselfand you listen to others giving theirs. Politicians are always goingon about providing a better quality of life for people as they get older,and a health service in which nobody ever gets bedsores. Banks promiseyou high interest rates, some food promises to make you lose weight ifyou eat it, and body creams guarantee old age with fewer wrinkles. Lifeis quite simply a matter of cruising along in your own little boat througha constantly changing but never-ending stream of promises. And howmany do we remember? We forget the ones we would like to remember,and we remember the ones we’d prefer to forget.”

“Poverty always looks the same, no matter where you come across it. The rich can always express their opulence by varying their lives. Different houses, clothes, cars. Or thoughts, dreams. But for the poor there is nothing but compulsory grayness, the only form of expression available to poverty.”

“When one historical period is replaced by another, there isalways a group of people left over from the old society”

“New ideas are always resisted.”

“The evil always comes from details.”