We think the world is ours forever, but we are little more than squatters.

Writers obviously have to bear witness to the harsh face of the age.

Any extreme political creed brought only darkness in the long run; it lit up nothing. The best politics were those of caution, tolerance and moderation, Angus maintained, but such politics were, alas, also very dull, and certainly moved nobody to poetry.

Every small wrong, every minor act of cruelty, every act of petty bullying was symbolic of a greater wrong. And if we ignored these small things, then did it not blunt our outrage over the larger wrongs?

Our minds can come up with the most entertaining possibilities, if we let them. But most of the time, we keep them under far too close a check.

International business, once allowed to stalk uncontrolled, killed the local, the small, the quirky.

Everybody has friends they dislike; people who they have slipped into relationships with, people they would not have chosen had they been more cautious, more circumspect.