It was like letting go and falling back into water and seeing yourself grinning up through the water, your face like a mask, and seeing the bubbles coming up as if you were trying to speak from under the water. And how do you know what it's like to try to speak from under water when you're drowned?

As soon as I turned the key I saw it hanging, the color of fire and sunset. the colour of flamboyant flowers. ‘If you are buried under a flamboyant tree, ‘ I said, ‘your soul is lifted up when it flowers. Everyone wants that.’ She shook her head but she did not move or touch me.

All of a writer that matters is in the book or books. It is idiotic to be curious about the person.

I have tried," I said, "but he does not believe me. It is too late for that now" (it is always too late for truth, I thought).

Something in her brain that still remained calm told her that she was doing a very foolish thing indeed.

You imagine the carefully pruned, shaped thing that is presented to you is truth. That is just what it isn't. The truth is improbable, the truth is fantastic; it's in what you think is a distorting mirror that you see the truth.

Next week, or next month, or next year I will kill myself. But I might as well last out my month's rent, which has been paid up.