I wonder if you encountered this dictum first spoken by a twentieth-century statesman: "An abyss cannot be crossed in two steps.

Human beings need to watch out for reasonless niceness too. It's never reasonless and its reason's not usually nice.

Spent the fortnight gone in the music room reworking my year's fragments into a 'sextet for overlapping soloists': piano, clarinet, 'cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor; in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't know until it's finished, and by then it'll be too late.

Once any tyranny becomes accepted as ordinary, its victory is assured.

I am going to tell you a secret. Everything is about wanting. Everything. Things happen because of people wanting. Watch closely, and you’ll see what I mean.

I'm from a time and place where bigheadedness was a really savage crime, and you'd get cut down for it by your peers and parents.

Do," said Louisa finally, "whatever you can't not do.