He walked on water. Perhaps. But could he have *swum* on land? In matching knickers and dark glasses? With his Fountain in a Love-in-Tokyo? In pointy shoes and a puff? Would he have had the imagination?

I think my eyes were knocked open and they don't close. I sometimes wish I could close them and look away.

Sometimes I think the world is divided into those who have a comfortable relationship with power and those who have a naturally adversarial relationship with power.

Humans are animals of habit.

By then Esthappen and Rahel had learned that the world had other ways of breaking men. They were already familiar with the smell. Sicksweet. Like old roses on a breeze.

Literature is the opposite of a nuclear bomb.

Fiction is the most joyous, beautiful, sophisticated, wonderful thing in the world.