And everything would be different, different.

Shiny musical instruments wailed, their mouths open like lilies.

To tell the truth, this was one of the few cases in which she had not told him just what she was thinking. Usually, she let him know whatever thoughts happened to come to her, and indeed he never took it amiss if she let slip a word that might pain him, because when all was said and done that was the price one paid for sincerity.

The writer is always to some extent in exile, wherever he is, because he is somehow outside, separated from others; there is always a distance.

And everything would be different, different.

It was only a phrase that went from mouth to mouth and was never quite swallowed.

I had three choices: to conform to my own beliefs, which meant death; complete silence, which meant another kind of death; to pay a tribute, a bribe. I chose the third solution by writing The Long Winter.