Not quite what one expected, but once it happened one realized it couldn't be any other way.

From the window, above the clatter of pots and the slamming of cabinets, Francis was singing, as though it was the happiest song in the world: 'We are the little black sheep who have gone astray . . . Baa baa baa . . . Gentlemen songsters off on a spree . . . Doomed from here to eternity . . .

Who was it said that coincidence was just God’s way of remaining anonymous?

...as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn't touch.

To understand the world at all, sometimes you could only focus on a tiny bit of it, look very hard at what was close to hand and make it stand in for the whole.

Sometimes it's about playing a poor hand well.

I love the tradition of Dickens, where even the most minor walk-on characters are twitching and particular and alive.