As for my father, few souls are less troubled. He can be simply pleased with us, pleased that we exist, and, from the vantage point of his wondrously serene old age, he contemplates our lives almost as if they were books he can dip into whenever he wants. His back pages, perhaps.

There are lots of things that you can brush under the carpet about yourself until you're faced with somebody whose needs won't be put off.

When I saw him look at me with lust, I dropped my eyes but, in glancing away from him, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. And I saw myself, suddenly, as he saw me, my pale face, the way the muscles in my neck stuck out like thin wire. I saw how much that cruel necklace became me. And, for the first time in my innocent and confined life, I sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption that took my breath away.

Out of the frying pan into the fire! What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? No different!

She said to the Daisy girl with her big brown eyes: 'I will not have it plain. No. Fancy. It must be fancy!' She meant her future. A moon-daisy dropped to the floor, down from her hair, like a faintly derisive sign from heaven.

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

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