But how to do feelings? All very well to write "She felt sad", or describe what a sad person might do, but what of sadness itself, how was that put across so it could be felt in all its lowering immediacy? Even harder was the threat, or the confusion of feeling contradictory things.

When anything can happen, everything matters.

Above all, she wanted to look as though she had not given the matter a moment's thought, and that would take time.

At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.

No emergency was ever dealt with effectively by democratic process.

He would work through the night and sleep until lunch. There wasn't really much else to do. Make something, and die.

Without a revolution of the inner life, however slow, all our big designs are worthless. The work we have to do is with ourselves if we're ever going to be at peace with each other...the good that flows from it will shape our societies in an unprogrammed, unforeseen way, under the control of no single group of people or set of ideas.