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On his daughters birthday

To buy a present would demonstrate he was not yet beaten, that he could do the surprising, lively thing. He would purchase his gift in joy rather than sorrow, in the spirit of loving extravagance, and in bringing it home and wrapping it up he would be making an offering to or a challenge - Look, I've brought the present, now you bring back the girl.

His depiction of growing up in an RAF family is so apt: the accumulation of souvenirs including coffee spoons from various cities, the lack of a true home, etc.

For children, childhood timeless. It's always the present. Everything is in the present tense. Of course they have memories. Of course time shifts a little for them and Christmas comes round in the end. But they don't feel it. Today is what they feel, and when they say ‘When I grow up.. ' there's always an edge of disbelief - how could they ever be other than what they are?

…to the first full flood of understanding of the true nature of his loss. Everything before had been fantasy, a routine and frenetic mimicry of sorrow. Just before dawn he began to cry, and it was from this moment in the semidarkness that he was to date his time of mourning.

They stepped outdoors as though into a storm. The main road was an arterial route south; its traffic rushed with adrenal ferocity. The bitter, cloudless day was to serve an obsessive memory well with a light of brilliant explicitness, a cynical eye for detail.