To begin, at the beginning.

Rhianon, he said, hold my hand, Rhianon. She did not hear him, but stood over his bed and fixed him with an unbroken sorrow. Hold my hand, he said, and then: why are your putting the sheet over my face?

The land of my fathers. My fathers can have it.

Go on thinking that you don't need to be read and you'll find that it may become quite true: no one will feel the need tom read it because it is written for yourself alone; and the public won't feel any impulse to gate crash such a private party.

It snowed last year too: I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea.

Cold beer is bottled God.

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobbledstreets silent and the hunched courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.