Love is not a victory march

Comic books, movies, radio programmes centered their entertainment around the fact of torture. With the clearest of consciences, with a patriotic intensity, children dreamed, talked, acted orgies of physical abuse. Imaginations were released to wander on a reconnaissance mission from Cavalry to Dachau. European children starved and watched their parents scheme and die. Here we grew up with toy whips. Early warning against our future leaders, the war babies.

I've never thought of myself as a singer anyway. . . I've been free from those considerations because so many people over the years told me I don't have a voice. I kind of bought that. I never thought that much about it to begin with. I knew I didn't have one of the great voices. As my Damon Runyanesque lawyer used to say, "none of you guys can sing. If I want to hear singing, I'll go to the Metropolitan Opera."

The obstacles are great and the suffering is great and people have got to make a living.

Only in Canada could somebody with a voice like mine win 'Vocalist of the Year'.

I'd written a lot of songs with hummingbirds in them. None of them ever came to anything, but I did write a few lines last month. It went like this: 'Listen to the hummingbird whose wings you cannot see. Listen to the hummingbird, don't listen to me'.

After a while, if you are sufficiently bored or unemployed, you may want to read it from cover to cover.