How far does a pretence of feeling, maintained with absolute conviction, become authentic?

We must all make do with the rags of love we find flapping on the scarecrow of humanity.

I drew the curtains to conceal the sight of my father's farewell; my spite was sharp as broken glass.

The only time I ever iron the sheets or make meringues is when there is an ... urgent deadline in the offing.

You were the living image of the entire Platonic shadow show, an illusion that could fill my emptiness with marvellous, imaginary things as long as, just as long as, the movie lasted, and then all would all vanish.

Aeneas carried his aged father on his back from the ruins of Troy and so do we all, whether we like it or not, perhaps even if we have never known them.

Iconic clothing has been secularized. . . . A guardsman in a dress uniform is ostensibly an icon of aggression; his coat is red as the blood he hopes to shed. Seen on a coat-hanger, with no man inside it, the uniform loses all its blustering significance and, to the innocent eye seduced by decorative colour and tactile braid, it is as abstract in symbolic information as a parasol to an Eskimo. It becomes simply magnificent.