Quotes from book

The Sense of an Ending

“May you be ordinary, as the poet once wished the new-born baby.”

“Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be.”

“You get towards the end of life - no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done wrong?”

“History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.”

“There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond this there is great unrest.”

“There's nothing wrong with being a genius who can fascinate the young. Rather, there's something wrong with the young who can't be fascinated by a genius.”

“The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life.”

“I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded - and how pitiful that was.”

“It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others.”

“Yes, of course we were pretentious -- what else is youth for?”

“Had my life increased, or merely added to itself? There had been addition and subtraction in my life, but how much multiplication?”

“What you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.”

“If you’re that clever you can argue yourself into anything.”

“Later on in life, you expect a bit of rest, don't you? You think you deserve it. I did, anyway. But then you begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life's business.”

“This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature.”

“Life seemed even more of a guessing game than usual.”

“And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time’s malleability.”

“History isn't the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt; I know that now. It's more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious or defeated.”

“You can put it another way, of course; you always can.”