“What is past, one cannot change,so each backward glance is a bit of the present slipping away.”

“She would say that what is past, one cannot change, so each backward glance is a bit of the present slipping away.”

“Novel-writing can be a cold-blooded business. One uses whatever happens to be lying around in memory and employs it to suit one’s end….Then, again, during the months whilst one is writing about the past, a story is colored by what presently is happening to its writer. So, imperceptibly, the tone of voice changes, original intentions slip away. And I found myself looking through another window at a darker landscape inhabited by neither the present nor the past. ”

“One is allowed to change the past: the present is so stubborn.”

“You cannot change the past. All you can do is change the way you allow the past to affect your present and future.”

“It isn't what you did in the past that will affect the present. It's what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future.”