The bluebells made such a pool that the earth had become like water, and all the trees and bushes seemed to have grown out of the water. And the sky above seemed to have fallen down on to the earth floor; and I didn’t know if the sky was the earth or the earth was water. I had been turned upside down. I had to hold the rock with my fingernails to stop me falling into the sky of the earth or the water of the sky. But I couldn’t hold on.

Rome is a place almost worn out by being looked at, a city collapsing under the weight of reference.

Some people feed you with love.

Repression in the human psyche is tightly bundled. When it has been pulled out of the sprung package so often it is perhaps difficult to push it back in the box.

What I mean is this: you meet someone, you think about them. You're already changing because of the way you think about them. You meet them again, you think about them some more, you're changing again. And on it goes. You are changing right now. Before my eyes.

Twenty years is, after all, a long time. We are not the same people we were. Old friends, lovers, even family members: they are strangers who happen to wear a familiar face. We have no right to claim to know anyone after such a distance.

That's emails for ya: sometimes they're like an arrow that hits so deep in the target, you can't pull it out.