The colossal might of wickedness: how we love to locate it massively elsewhere. But so much of it comes down to what each one of us does between breakfast and bedtime.

If magic was present, it moved under the skin of the world, beneath the ability of human eyes to catch sight of it.

That's the real power of art, I think. Not to chide but to provoke challenge. Otherwise why bother?

In summer moonlight, she was dangerously, inebriatingly magnified.

Well, the family always was bright, and brightness, as you know, decays brilliantly.

...I dabble in causes and effects.

They'd never been lovers, of course, not in the physical sense. But they'd been lovers as most of us manage, loving through expressions and gestures and the palm set softly upon the bruise at the necessary moment. Lovers by inclination rather than by lust. Lovers, that is, by love.