In the taxi I let my hand lie on her leg like a promise, but I had no intention of keeping my promise.

The world doesn't make any heroes anymore.

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

So it always is: when you escape to a desert the silence shouts in your ear.

It infuriated him to think that there were still people in the state who believed in a loving and merciful God. There are mystics who are said to have experienced God directly. He was a mystic, too, and what he had experienced was vacancy--a complete certainty in the existence of a dying, cooling world, of human beings who had evolved from animals for no purpose at all.

You must promise me. You can't desire the end without desiring the means.' Ah, but one can, he thought, one can: one can desire the peace of victory without desiring the ravaged towns.

So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days.