“The past doesn't matter. People cling to it because it allows them to ignore the present.”

“In the West we cling to the past like limpets. In Haiti the present is the axis of all life. As in Africa, past and future are but distant measures of the present, and memories are as meaningless as promises.”

“He called it The Bridge because that was how felt about books. They connected the past and the present, the present and the future. Books brought people together and gave them a path to worlds they would not otherwise experience.”

“When western books are set in the present, critics seldom call them westerns: the national myth allows the West only a past.”

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

“People forget history nowadays,that is what the ego does, making one the prisoner of one's inflated present, ignoring the humble past one had lived.”