“This is how most people live: alive, but not conscious; conscious but not aware; aware, but intermittently.”

“We're not really conscious of what we're doing most of the time.”

“We all operate on different levels of awareness. Half the time I don't know what I'm doing.”

“One of the hardest things about being alive is being with other people.”

“How grand, to be a Doctor of whatever and to weigh up and decide people's future.”

“Gradually the feeling wears off, and I feel swamped again by the inexplicable pettiness of being alive.”

“There was a pretty young woman I used to see pegging out sheets and I worried that she would grow old there and that no one would know how beautiful she was. And maybe she would die without ever having really lived.”