At the best of times, spring hurts depressives.

The end of all stories, even if the writer forebears to mention it, is death, which is where time stops short. Sheherezade knew this, which is why she kept on spinning another story out of the bowels of the last one, never coming to a point where she could say: "This is the end." Because it would have been.

There was a house we all had in common and it was called the past, even though we'd lived in different rooms.

I haven't changed much, over the years. I use less adjectives, now, and have a kinder heart, perhaps.

Nostalgia, the vice of the aged. We watch so many old movies our memories come in monochrome.

Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual.

My mother learned that she was carrying me at about the same time the Second World War was declared; with the family talent for magic realism, she once told me she had been to the doctor's on the very day.