…writing has always seemed to me a fight against loss, an instinct for replay; a resistance to the attrition of memory. To translate lived experience into a pattern of words that preserves its vitality without fixing it in literary embalming fluid; that for me has been the main thing.
— Simon Schama, <a href=“http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/f4d6f80a-fc29-11e1-aef9-00144feabdc0.html#axzz26Y99MpZT" title=“FT.com”>Why I Write</a>.