I write only because I cannot stop.

To live in a place where I am not, and in a time that is either past or not yet come.

I write only because I cannot stop.

We must make a journey around the world to see if a back door has perhaps been left open.

In Santiago, the capital of the kingdom of Chile, at the moment of the great earthquake of 1647 in which many thousands lost their lives, a young Spaniard called Jeronimo Rugera was standing beside one of the pillars in the prison to which he had been committed on a criminal charge, and he was about to hang himself.