“The richness of the whole world reduced to a choice that was not a choice at all, but a sentence.”

“I am afraid of reduction. After a lifetime's independence- yes, selfish independence- I am terrified of being reduced to childhood once more, to helplessness, to seas of confusion from which the cruel lucid intervals poke up like rock shoals. I don't want to sit in my chair and be fed, much less do I want to be handed over to medical professionals.”

“The dead and not-yet dead, we are company all together.”

“Christmas works like glue, it keeps us all sticking together.”

“Love. The wide sea that one word conjures up, all the currents and tides and storms and oily swells of it.”

“I am not afraid of death, which after all can't be far away. What does frighten me, though, is the halfway stage.”

“I can only strive for what is important”