How much do you love me?' Midori asked. 'Enough to melt all the tigers in the world to butter,' I said.

I go back to the reading room, where I sink down in the sofa and into the world of The Arabian Nights. Slowly, like a movie fadeout, the real world evaporates. I'm alone, inside the world of the story. My favourite feeling in the world.

It's like a kid standing at the window watching the rain.

The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.

I'd be smiling and chatting away, and my mind would be floating around somewhere else, like a balloon with a broken string.

The silence grew deeper, so deep that if you listened carefully you might very well catch the sound of the earth revolving on its axis.

In real life things don’t go so smoothly. At certain points in our lives, when we really need a clear-cut solution, the person who knocks at our door is, more likely than not, a messenger bearing bad news.