“It isn't just the past we remember, it's the future too.Fifty per cent of memory is devoted not to what has already happened,but to what will happen next. Appointments, anniversaries, meetings,all the rolling engagements and plans,all the hopes and dreams and ambitions which make up any human life- we remember what we did and also what we will do. Only the knife edge of the present is 'hard' to any degree.Past and future are things of the mind,and a mind can be changed.”

“My life will be what I make it," he told her. "That is true for all of us all the time. We cannot know what the future will bring or how the events of the future will make us feel. We cannot even plan and feel any certainty that our most carefully contrived plans will be put into effect. Could I have predicted what happened to me in the Peninsula? Could you have predicted what happened to you in Cornwall? But those things happened to us nevertheless. And they changed our plans and our dreams so radically that we both might have been excused for giving up, for never planning or dreaming again, for never living again. That too is a choice we all have to make.”

“All we have to face in the future is what has happened in the past. It is unbearable.”

“Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.”

“Can one make the future a substitute for the present? And what guarantee have we that the future will be any better if we neglect the present?”

“Thoughts are real', he said. 'Words are real. Everything human is real, and sometimes we know things before they happen, even if we aren't aware of it. We live in the present, but the future is inside us at every moment. Maybe that's what writing is all about, Sid. Not recording events from the past, but making things happen in the future'.”