Books are the mind's ballast, for so many of us--the cargo that makes us what we are, a freight that is ephemeral and indelible, half-forgotten but leaving an imprint. They are nutrition, too. My old age fear is not being able to read--the worst deprivation. Or no longer having my books around me: the familiar, eclectic, explanatory assemblage that hitches me to the wide world, that has freed me from the prison of myself, that has helped me to think, and to write.

The consideration of change over the century is about loss, though I think that social change is gain rather than loss.

I didn't think I had anything particular to say, but I thought I might have something to say to children.

If we had not met, that day, I think I would have imagined you somehow.