The Children of Men

by P.D. James

I still occasionally need to struggle but I now fear it less. The weapons I fight it with are also my consolations: books, music, food, wine, nature.

We can experience nothing but the present moment, live in no other second of time, and to understand this is as close as we can get to eternal life.

History, which interprets the past to understand the present and confront the future, is the least rewarding discipline for a dying species.

Children are always ready to believe that adult catastrophes are their fault.

The world of the terminally ill is the world of neither the living nor the dead.

Luke said: “Then we haven’t got sound government.” “We may have the best that is possible in the circumstances. There was wide public support for setting up the Man Penal Colony. No government can act in advance of the moral will of the people.” Julian said: “Then we have to change the moral will. We have to change people.” Theo laughed. “Oh, that’s the kind of rebellion you have in mind? Not the system but human hearts and minds. You’re the most dangerous revolutionaries of all, or would be if you had the slightest idea how to begin, the slightest chance of succeeding.”

“We all die alone. We shall endure death as once we endured birth. You can’t share either experience.”

Whatever man has done for good or ill has been done in the knowledge that he has been formed by history, that his life-span is brief, uncertain, insubstantial, but that there will be a future, for the nation, for the race, for the tribe. That hope has finally gone except in the minds of fools and fanatics. Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past; without hope of a future he becomes a beast. We see in every country in the world the loss of that hope, the end of science and invention, except for discoveries which may extend life or add to its comfort and pleasure, the end of our care for the physical world and our planet. What does it matter what turds we leave behind as legacies of our brief disruptive tenancy?

She could argue that good could come out of evil; it was surely more difficult to argue that evil could come out of good.