Cheryl’s Reviews > Mantel Pieces: Royal Bodies and Other Writing from the London Review of Books > Status Update

“For most people, the era of selfless risk-taking is a phase. It irritates their elders while it lasts...But then, if young persons survive their ideals, something happens which surprises them: they learn a trade, they develop ambitions, they fall in love, they get a stake in life. Or simply time passes, and middle age beckons, with its shoddy compromises”

“The young dream of transcending their circumstances, of shaming the mediocrities around them; of saving lives, of being martyrs. When you have so much future before you, life seems cheap; perhaps you cannot fully imagine, as older people can, being extinguished, simply coming to nothing.”