Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there’s no room for the present at all.

I should like to bury something precious, in every place I've been happy. And then when I was old, and ugly and miserable, I could come back, and dig it up, and remember.

If you asked me now who I am, the only answer I could give with any certainty would be my name: Charles Ryder. For the rest: my loves, my hates, down even to my deepest desires, I can no longer say whether these emotions are my own, or stolen from those I once so desperately wished to be. On second thought, one emotion remains my own. Alone among the borrowed and the second-hand, as pure as that faith from which I am still in flight: Guilt.

It's rather a pleasant change... when all your life you've had people looking after you, to have someone to look after, yourself.

~ Evelyn Waugh - Brideshead Revisited -