To live with the work and the letters of James Joyce was an enormous privilege and a daunting education. Yes, I came to admire Joyce even more because he never ceased working, those words and the transubstantiation of words obsessed him. He was a broken man at the end of his life, unaware that Ulysses would be the number one book of the twentieth century and, for that matter, the twenty-first.

The other me, who did not mean to drown herself, went under the sea and remained there for a long time. Eventually she surfaced near Japan and people gave her gifts but she had been so long under the sea she did not recognize what they were. She is a sly one. Mostly at night we commune. Night. Harbinger of dream and nightmare and bearer of omens which defy the music of words. In the morning the fear of her going is very real and very alarming. It can make one tremble. Not that she cares. She is the muse. I am the messenger.

fear is a dreadful drawback because it stops us living in the moment.

We hide the truer part of ourselves when we love.

I know the mistake I am making. I see the exits in life.

Writing is the product of a deeply disturbed psyche, and by no means therapeutic.

There was always a real reason for everything - why spoons tarnished, and jam furred, and people declined into God, or drink, or card games.