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" The sense of one's past is so strong and forms our sense of self so strongly, it will always fascinate, elude and confuse me. "

Samantha Harvey

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" Socrates was famously executed for his philosophical and political beliefs. I wondered what would happen if you had a similar character, who was so relentlessly questioning of everything? In a modern society, would we be any more or any less tolerant of that kind of character? "

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" As the U.S., much of Europe, and the U.K. shift toward the political right, the rhetoric grows more insular, defensive, and protective. "

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" I'm just fascinated by the past. You know, both by the possibilities it holds and by the complete tyranny of it, the way it sort of keeps you in this stranglehold and makes you want things that you no longer have and you can never get back. "

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" I made a decision when I started writing 'All is Song' to take the compliments I had for 'The Wilderness' and try to be confident and not overwhelmed by it. "

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" Socrates, after all, could be an intensely annoying man, all the time questioning passers-by until they became exasperated. "

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" Common perceptions of female friendships are morning coffees discussing children, bags, periods and agreeing about the misdemeanours of men... mild, soft, nurturing relationships. "

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" Down on the ground, we seem to do anything but make lengthy, robust monologues. We can communicate in an instant almost anywhere. Gone is the slow old letter - itself a monologue, a sort of considered performance of best self - and in its place is the e-mail, the text, the SMS, the tweet. "

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" We see book-burning as a crime against humanity: it's intolerable because books represent a kind of freedom to us. "

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" One of the most unsettling things about 'Monologue' is its long silences, in which the man sits alone, staring into the middle distance, without grip of his narrative, lost to the past. "

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" The past is open to all sorts of magical possibilities because it can't be verified. It's as we make it, so it seems to be entirely free. It seems to be completely up for grabs. But of course it's not. "

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" There are many ways to go about a story. And if you give yourself some formal constraints, it just makes the job so much - maybe 'easier' isn't the right word, but because you know your boundaries, you can just play within those boundaries much more, so it's much more fun to do. "

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" The Japanese have different words for love. To them, it's plain weird that we love spaghetti and love our children and love our lovers, all with the same word, when surely the thing being described as love is radically different in each case. "

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" What I always liked about Socrates was his insistence on questioning things for the sake of reaching some sort of clarity - even if it is only clarity about the gaps in our knowledge. "

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