The devil is a very big angel, but a very little man.

The world unwraps itself to you, again and again as soon as you are ready to see it anew.

And a puzzle is for the piecing together, especially for the young, who still believe it can be done.

The world was floods above and fire below

Forgive us our trespasses," says Margarethe, "and get out of our way.

She assumes that skill will guide her fingertips, that shapely lines will uncoil out of the pencil the moment she starts. Surely talent is a thing curled deep inside, just waiting to be exercised, and at the slightest invitation it will stretch, shake itself, make itself known? Talent, it seems, is not so insistent.

We live in our tales of ourselves, she thought, and ignore as best we can the contradictions, and the lapses, and the abrasions of plot against our mortal souls.