The ghosts of monuments torn down were wandering around the platform, and the President of Forgetting was at the rostrum with a red kerchief around his neck. The children were applauding and shouting his name.

Eight years have gone by since then, but I still hear his words coming to me through the flowering apple trees.

He said “Children! You are the future!” and now I realise these words have a meaning that was not initially apparent. Children are the future not because they will one day be adults but because humanity is becoming more and more a child, because childhood is the image of the future.

- Milan Kundera