  Following a line of research that I have developed for several years, I argue
that the best strategy for understanding quantum gravity is to build a picture
of the physical world where the notion of time plays no role. I summarize here
this point of view, explaining why I think that in a fundamental description of
nature we must "forget time", and how this can be done in the classical and in
the quantum theory. The idea is to develop a formalism that treats dependent
and independent variables on the same footing. In short, I propose to interpret
mechanics as a theory of relations between variables, rather than the theory of
the evolution of variables in time.
