Chimpanzees look nearly human. They share most of their DNA with us. But we do research on them. We experiment on them and because they’re not quite human, that’s all right.

The fire melts into velvety blackness. There are stars in the blackness, and I want to count them one by one, but they’re dancing too fast...

Everyone knows they’re only stories. Mermaids aren’t real: they’re a legend. As long as humans believe that, Ingo is safe.

Some things, if you don’t do them, they follow you all your life, whispering in your ear,” says Granny Carne. She faces me sternly as if she’s judging me. “You’ll find a dozen good reasons why you pulled back from the Call, and you’ll even fool yourself that you had no other choice. But in your bed at night you’ll curse yourself for a coward.

It seemed to me that there was a self-interest hidden in the core of all of us, which cooled us when we contemplated any fate which did not touch us directly.

The poets whom I knew then were all men and all seemed dauntingly sure of themselves – although I am sure that really they were as uncertain as I was.

I don’t know how you humans ever get anything done, you ask so many questions.

Only a very few people leave traces in history, or even bequeath family documents to their descendants. Most have no money to memorialise themselves, and lack even a gravestone to mark their existence. Women’s lives, in particular, remain largely unrecorded. But even so, did they not shape the future?

A trouble shared is a trouble halved.

However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I’m concerned.