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.

And there the wicked witch stayed for a long long time.' Did she ever come out?' Not yet.

All our lives are activity without meaning; we burrow ratlike into life and we squirm ratlike through it and ratlike we are flung into our graves at the end. Now and then, why shouldn't we hear a voice of prophecy.

Oh now that's a blueprint for an impossibly rosy future

The moon rose, an opalescent goddess tipping light from her harsh maternal scimitar.

There was much to hate in this world and too much to love.

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?