Every letter was a love letter.

Pregnancy humbles husbands. After an initial rush of male pride they quickly recognise the minor role that nature had assigned them in the drama of reproduction.

The only way we know it's true is that we both dreamed it. That's what reality is. It's a dream everyone has together.

When you stood between somebody you loved and death, it was hard to be awake and it was hard to sleep.

Usually my ideas are small.

At night the cries of cats making love or fighting, their caterwauling in the dark, told us that the world was pure emotion, flung back and forth among its creatures, the agony of the one-eyed Siamese no different from that of the Lisbon girls, and even the trees plunged in feeling.

A seven-year-old girl can take only so many walks with her grandfather.