Yes, of course we were pretentious -- what else is youth for?

I was initially planning to write about grief in terms of Eurydice and the myth thereof. By that point the overall metaphor of height and depth and flat and falling and rising was coming into being in my mind.

This is what those who haven’t crossed the tropic of grief often fail to understand: the fact that someone is dead may mean that they are not alive, but doesn’t mean that they do not exist.

To look at ourselves from afar, to make the subjective suddenly objective: this gives us a psychic shock.

We live, we die, we are remembered, we are forgotten.

When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.

Whisky, I find, helps clarity of thought. And reduces pain. It has the additional virtue of making you drunk or, if taken in sufficient quantity, very drunk.