It's subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.

I was an only child. I lost both my parents. By the time I was twenty I was bald. I'm homosexual. In the way of circumstances and background to transcend I had everything an artist could possibly want. It was practically a blueprint.

Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.

I had no idea of who could play it, no notion really. Then Richard came to see us but I don't think it was decided at that meeting. The trouble is, as soon as you've chosen somebody it obscures anybody else you might have thought of. It's like going to a place that you've never been to before - you've got a picture of it and then you go there and that picture is totally wiped out by the reality.

It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.

One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty.

I'm not "happy" but I'm not unhappy about it.