His touch both consoles and devastates me; I feel my heart pulse, then wither, naked as a stone on the roaring mattress while the lovely, moony night slides through the window to dapple the flanks of this innocent who makes cages to keep the sweet birds in. Eat me, drink me; thirsty, cankered, goblin-ridden, I go back and back to him to have his fingers strip the tattered skin away and clothe me in his dress of water, this garment that drenches me, its slithering odour, its capacity for drowning.

All artists, they say, are a little mad. This madness is, to a certain extent, a self-created myth designed to keep the generality away from the phenomenally close-knit creative community. Yet, in the world of the artists, the consciously eccentric are always respectful and admiring if those who have the courage to be genuinely a little mad.

What would the daughters of the rich do with themselves if the poor ceased to exist?

ordered me a sky from a florist

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

A fairy tale is the kind of story in which one king goes to another king to borrow a cup of sugar

I will tell you what Jeanne was like. She was like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off.