I wrote at the start that this was a record of hate, and walking there beside Henry towards the evening glass of beer, I found the one prayer that seemed to serve the winter mood: O God, You've done enough, You've robbed me of enough, I'm too tired and old to learn to love, leave me alone forever.

From childhood I had never believed in permanence, and yet I had longed for it. Always I was afraid of losing happiness. This month, next year...death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again forever.

Our worst enemies here are not the ignorant and simple, however cruel; our worst enemies are the intelligent and corrupt

It is the storytellers task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.

As long as one suffers one lives.

God save us always,' I said 'from the innocent and the good.

The border means more than a customs house, a passport officer, a man with a gun. Over there everything is going to be different; life is never going to be quite the same again after your passport has been stamped.