“I don't think there's any deep psychological reason. It isn't comparable, say, to America's involvement with Vietnam and the emotional scars that that has left behind. A much more cogent way of looking at it is that the British have suddenly realized that they have their own equivalent of the perennial western. We have an immense, extremely colorful, diverse history of the empire, and I think people are just beginning to realize that there are jolly good stories there for the telling.”

“l have no recollection of just when, or more important, why l set about telling the story of the Siege. l suppose it was because l realized l had the right background - and because no one else, as far as I knew, had ever tried it.”

“Life is something we have to experience, really feel, not just study for with books in a library. Learning is about so much more than school. If we’re too busy studying, we miss out on the experience.”

“(M)uch as we might imagine we can leave the past behind, it has a nasty way of pressing its hoary old face against the window just as we were sitting down to the feast.”

“Sometimes having no script, having no idea what is going to happen next, having no map, might be the way to go. Because life just happens, and when it does, how you handle it will teach you more about who you are than any class or test ever can. The best preparation for the rest of your life is, maybe, no preparation at all. Dive right in. Make mistakes. Break a few rules. Wing it.”

“I’m gathering Kylie thinks that all it takes to capture an image is to point and shoot. That’s what everyone thinks. But there’s a lot more to it. It’s taken me years to frame things correctly. People assume you can’t take good pictures on an iPhone, but they’re wrong. Some of my best shots are on the phone.They’re raw and simple, and most of the time no one knows you’re taking a picture. It’s much better than the thousand-dollar Nikon my dad got me for Christmas. I don’t think I’ve used it in months.”

“We each have our own way of expressing ourselves. I just think that life gives us things, situations— people— to make us see how much we have to learn . . . how much we need to remember to stay humble and realize we are just like children. We don't know everything.”