A story so cherished it has to be dressed in casualness to disguise its significance in case the listener turned out to be unsympathetic.

My mother and I were like two continents moving slowly but inexorably apart; my father, the bridge builder, constantly extending the fragile edifice he had constructed to connect us.

My genius is not so frail a thing that it cowers from the dirty fingers of newspapernen.

There are cultures in which it is believed that a name contains all a persons mystical power. That a name should be known only to God and to the person who holds it and to very few privileged others. To pronounce such a name either ones own or someone else's is to invite jeopardy. This it seemed was such a name.

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

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

I read *old* novels. The reason is simple. I prefer proper endings.