...with a grief no less sharp for not being intimate with its object.

I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.

Clearly something had gone wrong, badly, only I wasn't quite sure what—apart from knowing that I was responsible somehow, in the generalized miasma of shame and unworthiness and being-a-burden that never quite left me.

As I stood with her on the platform - she impatient, tapping her foot, leaning forward to look down the tracks - it seemed more than I could bear to see her go. Francis was around the corner, buying her a book to read on the train. 'I don't want you to leave,' I said. 'I don't want to, either.' 'Then don't.' 'I have to.' We stood looking at each other. It was raining. She looked at me with her rain-colored eyes. Camilla, I love you,' I said. 'Let's get married.

I guess that anything we manage to save from history is a miracle.

Well, I do have some maiden aunts that are not quite like the aunts in the book, but I definitely do have a couple of them, and a couple of old aunties.

Criticism at the wrong time, even if it's legitimate criticism, can be seriously damaging and make the writer lose faith in what he's doing. It's the timing that's all-important.