WHORES. Necessary in the nineteenth century for the contraction of syphilis, without which no one could claim genius.

But then you begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life’s business.

One of the troubles is this: the heart isn't heart-shaped.

The rainbow in place of the unicorn? Why didn't God just restore the unicorn? We animals would have been happier with that, instead of a big hint in the sky about God's magnanimity every time it stopped raining.

It took me some years to clear my head of what Paris wanted me to admire about it, and to notice what I preferred instead. Not power-ridden monuments, but individual buildings which tell a quieter story: the artist's studio, or the Belle Epoque house built by a forgotten financier for a just-remembered courtesan.

Everything in art depends on execution: the story of a louse can be as beautiful as the story of Alexander. You must write according to your feelings, be sure those feelings are true, and let everything else go hang. When a line is good it ceases to belong to any school. A line of prose must be as immutable as a line of poetry.

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.