Christmas it seems to me is a necessary festival; we require a season when we can regret all the flaws in our human relationships: it is the feast of failure, sad but consoling.

In the end there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship.

Destruction after all is a form of creation.

I couldn't help wondering, is my husband so unattractive that no woman has ever wanted him? Except me, of course. I must have wanted him, in a way, once, but I've forgotten why, and I was too young to know what I was choosing.

Death never mattered at those times - in the early days I even used to pray for it: the shattering annihilation that would prevent for ever the getting up, the putting on of clothes, the wathchign her torch trail across to the opposite side of the common like the tail-light of a low car driving away.

What have we all got to expect that we allow ourselves to be so lined with disappointment?

There are times when a lover longs to be also a father and a brother: he is jealous of the years he hasn't shared.