Are you the dart?" he said. "Are you the knife? The fuse?" She said (though he wasn't convinced): "My deane, my poppet, I am too green to walk into a public place and do something bad.

Maybe the definition of home is the place where you are never forgiven. So you may always belong there, bound by guilt. And maybe the cost of belonging is worth it.

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.

Books fall open, you fall in. When you climb out again, you're a bit larger than you used to be.

So let my hands and my face make their way in this world, let my hungry eyes see, my tongue taste.

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

As long as people are going to call you lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention.