Observing human variety can give pleasure, but so too can human sameness.

We knew so little about eachother. We lay mostly submerged, like ice floes with our visible social selves projecting only cool and white. Here was a rare sight below the waves, of a man's privacy and turmoil, of his dignity upended by the overpowering necessity of pure fantasy, pure thought, by the irreducible human element - Mind.

Especially difficult when the first and best unconscious move of a dedicated liar is to persuade himself he's sincere. And once he's sincere, all deception vanishes.

...the world she ran through loved her and would give her what she wanted and would let it happen.

You enter a state of controlled passivity, you relax your grip and accept that even if your declared intention is to justify the ways of God to man, you might end up interesting your readers rather more in Satan.

The moment you lose curiosity in the world, you might as well be dead.

At the back of my mind I had a sense of us sitting about waiting for some terrible event, and then I would remember that it had already happened.