How will the ships navigate without stars? And then he remembered that the stars were dead, long dead, and the light they shed was not to be trusted, was false, if not an outright lie, and in any case was inadequate, unequal to its task, which was to illuminate the evil that men did.

How will the ships navigate without stars? And then he remembered that the stars were dead, long dead, and the light they shed was not to be trusted, was false, if not an outright lie, and in any case was inadequate, unequal to its task, which was to illuminate the evil that men did.

All I did was write it down, one word after the other, beginning and ending with the same one, Bombay.

Because now there's time enough not to hurry, to light the lamp and open the window to the moon and take a moment to dream of a great and broken city, because when the day starts its business I'll have to stop, these are night-time tales that vanish in the sunlight like vampire dust

I found Bombay and opium, the drug and the city, the city of opium and the drug Bombay

Come on, a 25-page digression on god? You can’t have that kind of thing, cut it out!”

We're waiting for a glance or a word, some acknowledgement that we are here.