He looked at a world of incredible loveliness. Old distaff Celt's blood in some back chamber of his brain moved him to discourse with the birches, with the oaks. A cool green fire kept breaking in the woods and he could hear the footsteps of the dead. Everything had fallen from him. He scarce could tell where his being ended or the world began nor did he care. He lay on his back in the gravel, the earth's core sucking his bones, a moment's giddy vertigo with this illusion of falling outward through blue and windy space, over the offside of the planet, hurtling through the high thin cirrus.

This country will kill you in a heartbeat and still people love it.

The world was new each day for God so made it daily. Yet it contained within it all the evils as before, no more, no less.

When he went back to the fire he knelt and smoothed her hair as she slept and he said if he were God he would have made the world just so and no different.

See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. He stokes the scullery fire.

I felt early on I wasn't going to be a respectable citizen.

It would take a hell of a wife to beat no wife at all.