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

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.

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

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

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

Drugs are a bad habit, so why do it? Because, said Dimple, it isn't the heroin that we're addicted to, it's the drama of the life, the chaos of it, that's the real addiction and we never get over it; and because when you come down to it, the high life, that is, the intoxicated life, is the best of the limited options offered.

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