When one is nothing, one invents. It fills a void.

A birth is not really a beginning. Our lives at the start are not really our own but only the continuation of someone else's story.

Boys do not leave their boyhood behind when they leave off their school uniform.

opening the book, i inhaled. the smell of old books, so sharp, so dry you can taste it.

Art, its completeness, its formedness, its finishedness, had no power to console. Words on the other hand, were a lifeline. They left their hushed rhythm behind, a counter to the slow in and out of Emmeline's breathing.

The hours between eight in the evening and one or two in the morning have always been my magic hours. Against the blue candlewick bedspread the white pages of my open book, illuminated by a circle of lamplight, were the gateway to another world.

For it must be very lonely being dead.