Those times are over and gone, and good riddance to them, too. We were hopelessly high-spirited. Now we're the tick-waisted generation, dragging along our children behind us and carrying our parents on our backs. And we're in charge, while the figures who used to command our respect are wasting away.

Wishing is the beginning of imagination. They practice wishing when they are young things, and then -when they have grown - they have a developed imagination. Which can do some harm - greed, that kind of thing - but more often does them some good. They can imagine that things might be different. Might be other than they seem. Could be better.

From torched skyscrapers, men grew wings.

It's the only condition I know. Bitter Love, Loneliness, contempt for corruption, blind hope. It's where I live. A permanent state of bereavement. This is nothing new.

Even God used silence as a strategy.

It was mild monsters like these that made Jack the Ripper go after young women, she decided: who could tolerate yielding the world to someone who behaved as if she had given birth to the very world herself?

I don't like work like that. I am the silent partner. I work through events, I live on the sidelines, I dabble in causes and effects, I watch how the misbegotten creatures of this world live their lives.