We are not the only animal that mourns; apes do, and elephants, and dogs. Yet we are the only one that tortures.

The Sarajevans have a very particular world view - a mordant wit coupled with this unbearable sadness and... truckloads of guts, you know.

Even the classics that we read to our young children are full of wolves' fangs and burning ovens and bloody feet and ice shards piercing hearts. Even the New Testament climaxes with an act of unspeakable torture. Might as well just read to our kids from the Amnesty Annual Report and be done with it.

The brave man, the real hero, quakes with terror, sweats, feels his very bowels betray him, and in spite of this moves forward to do the act he dreads.

I can always write. Sometimes, to be sure, what I write is crap, but it's words on the page and therefore it is something to work with.

When I write a word in English, a simple one, such as, say, 'chief,' I have unwittingly ushered a querulous horde into the room. The Roman legionary is there, shaking his 'cap,' or head, and Al Cap is there, slouching in his signature working man's headgear.

To know a man's library is, in some measure, to know a man's mind.