“The mature brain is a time capsule. History resides in its structure.”

“You are the music of the spheres heard from the particular vantage point that is you.”

“The instant is not in time -- time is in the instant.”

“If time is a line, it is a special one.”

“Stories to read are delitabill (delightful)Suppose that they be nocht but fable (fiction)Then should stories that suthfast were (truthful)- And they were said in good manner -Have double pleasure in hearing.The first pleasance is the carping (reading aloud)And the tothir the suthfastnessThat shows the thing richt as it was;”

“We live in time, it bounds us and defines us, and time is supposed to measure history, isn't it? But if we can't understand time, can't grasp its mysteries of pace and progress, what chance do we have with history—even our own small, personal, largely undocumented piece of it?”

“If a memory wasn't a thing but a memory of a memory of a memory, mirrors set in parallel, then what the brain told you now about what it claimed had happened then would be coloured by what had happened in between. It was like a country remembering its history: the past was never just the past, it was what made the present able to live with itself.”