Slowly, desolately, the fist of what we'd done unclenched the clawed palm of what we'd become.

Food is music to the body, music is food to the heart.

The man grinned back at me with that perfect sincerity we fear and call simple-minded.

Good soldiers are defined by what they can endure, not by what they can inflict.

But I smiled, and smiling was easy, no matter how strange and disorienting the street seemed to be. I was a fugitive. I was a wanted man, a hunted man, with a price on my head. And I was still one step ahead of them. I was free. Every day, when you're on the run, is the whole of your life. Every free minute is a short story with a happy ending.

The contrast between the familiar and the exceptional was everywhere around me. A bullock cart was drawn up beside a modern sports car at a traffic signal. A man squatted to relieve himself behind the discreet shelter of a satellite dish. An electric forklift truck was being used to unload goods from an ancient wooden cart with wooden wheels. The impression was of a plodding indefatigable and distant past that had crashed intact through barriers of time into its own future. I liked it.

Every virtuous act is inspired by a dark secret.