All History, Of Course, Is The History

And In Another Year Everything Will Be Different Yet Again. It Is Always Like That, And Always Will Be; You Are Forever Standing On The Brink, In A Place Where You Cannot See Ahead; There Is Nothing Of Which To Be Certain Except What Lies Behind. This Should Be Terrifying, But Somehow It Is Not.

I Have Long Been Interested In Landscape History, And When Younger And More Robust I Used To Do Much Tramping Of The English Landscape In Search Of Ancient Field Systems, Drove Roads, Indications Of Prehistoric Settlement. Towns And Cities, Too, Which Always Retain The Ghost Of Their Earlier Incarnations Beneath Today's Concrete And Glass.

Giving Presents Is One Of The Most Possessive Things We Do, Did You Realize That? It's The Way We Keep A Hold On Other People. Plant Ourselves In Their Lives.

Every Novel Generates Its Own Climate, When You Get Going.

It Seems To Me That Everything That Happens To Us Is A Disconcerting Mix Of Choice And Contingency.