Old truths and ancient magic, revolution and invention, all conspire to distract us from the passion that in one way or another defeats us all.

In a way he made me think of a child doll, with briliant faintly red-brown glass eyes - a doll that had been found in an attic. I wanted to polish him with kisses, clean him up, make him evevn more radiant than he was. "That's what you always want," he said softly... "When you found me under Les Innocents," he said, "you wanted to bathe me with perfume and dress me in velvevt with great embroidered sleeves." "Yes," I said, "and comb your hair, your beautiful russet hair." My tone was angry. "You look good to me, you damnable little devil, good to embrace and good to love.

I loved words. I love to sing them and speak them and even now, I must admit, I have fallen into the joy of writing them.

Perhaps this is the only real evil left.

A summer rain had left the night clean and sparkling with drops of water. I leaned against the end pillar of the gallery, my head touching the soft tendrils of a jasmine which grew there in a constant battle with a wisteria, and I thought of what lay before me throughout the world and throughout time, and resolved to go about it delicately and reverently, learning that from each thing which would take me best to another.

He had never expected death to be this quiet, this secretive, this easy.

To learn and to love, that is what we are here for, any activity which is not grounded in one of these two is a waste of time.