> Frank Kermode, in his famous book The Sense of an Ending, elaborated on Cohn’s masterwork by suggesting that actually it’s very common for all of us – especially artists – to feel that we live at the end of times, and that our own demise means all the more to us because we’re not simply dying in the middle of the plot, in medias res. Our lives take on significance because as we decline we notice our society is declining all around us. It’s part of a yearning for narrative significance. As Kermode said, no one can hear a clock saying, as it does, tick tick. What we hear is tick tock. A beginning and an end. We impose this order.

- Ian McEwan