Excerpts: “It has been reckoned that since we appeared on the planet there have been 17 billion human beings, 7 billion of whom are alive today” (p. 7).

“It has been said that the past is another country. Well, visit it in your memory, explore its foreignness, and see how different you were then. Be embarrassed by that other self, but be forgiving, too. None of us really knew what we were doing. We were making it up as we went along, trying to figure it out; get the hang of it; find ourselves. Smile as you remember the way it was back then. Shake your head, but be kind” (p. 37-38).

“The philosopher Mary Warnock tells the same story in a different way. She says that if we lived in laboratory conditions where all chance elements in our lives from birth could be exactly clocked and recorded, the choices we made as our story unfolded would appear to be foregone conclusions. She says we feel free because we are ignorant of our own genetic system and all the circumstances that programmed the computer that is our brain” (p. 47).

“The inability to forgive works the same way. It imprisons us in the past, whether in our personal or in our group relations. That’s why most of the wars and feuds that characterize human history are the constant rehearsal of a past offence” (p. 53).

“It is the absoluteness of the loss we feel after a death that stuns us” (p. 126).

“Grief is shattering, but it can be survived if we let ourselves experience it. It has to be done, not bypassed, muffled or diverted. An important part of doing it is anamnesis, the work of remembrance, of going back over the life we have lost as if searching for clues that might solve the mystery of its departure” (p. 136).

“Whatever the circumstances that attend a death, grief has to be done, it has to be expressed. The pain has to be endured. We have to get used to the fact that someone who was there has now gone forever” (p. 137-138).

“Gradually, almost without knowing it, our energy shifts from the past to the present; from the way things were to the way they are. The will to live that is in the heart of every creature asserts itself again. And life overcomes death, even a death we thought we would never recover from” (p. 138).

Holloway, Richard. (2018). Waiting for the Last Bus: Reflections on Life and Death. Edinburgh, Great Britain: Canongate Books Ltd.