“It's always hard when you've known a person a long time and then you have to recognise that you have nothing left in common but your memories.”

“What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person.”

“The more you try to describe a dream the further it eludes your grasp, retreating before the advance of the words, growing cooler and cooler and paler and paler, until, when you have recorded it all, there is nothing of what it was really like left in your memory.”

“Inspiration is never genuine if it is known as inspiration at the time. True inspiration always steals on a person; its importance not being fully recognised for some time.”

“This is your country. These are your houses. These are your cultivated fields and gardens, and your memories lie here. You are not going to leave your country, are you, just because you live hard there or because you have been weighed down by the injustices and humiliation? It has never been typical of the Serbian and Montenegrin people to yield before obstacles and to become demoralized when facing a problem, when coming upon hard times.”

“That's the trouble, you see. When you've had hatred on your tongue for such a long time, you don't know how to spit it out.”

“You can miss a person you've never known.”

“That is how you know you've left childhood behind-when you wish for time to go backward.”

“When you come after Americans, we go after you. It may take time, but we have long memories, and our reach has no limit.”

“Memory is identity…. You are what you have done; what you have done is in your memory; what you remember defines who you are; when you forget your life you cease to be, even before your death.”