The characters [of The Tempest] have always been favorites of mine. It is one of his meditations on art - what it does.

I knew what love was supposed to be: obsession with undertones of nausea.

You're dead, Cordelia.' No I'm not. 'Yes you are. You're dead. Lie down.

I'm working on my own life story. I don't mean I'm putting it together; no, I'm taking it apart.

For an instant she felt them, their identities, almost their substance, pass over her head like a wave. At some time she would be — or no, already she was like that too; she was one of them, her body the same, identical, merged with that other flesh that choked the air in the flowered room with its sweet organic scent; she felt suffocated by this thick sargasso-sea of femininity.

Something is unfolding, being revealed to me. I see that there's a whole world of of girls and their doings that has been unknown to me, and that I can be part of without making any effort at all. I don't have to keep up with anyone, run as fast, aim as well, make loud explosive noises, decode messages, die on cue. I don't have to think about whether I do these things well, as well as a boy. All I have to do is sit on the floor and cut frying pans our of the Eaton's Catalogue with embroidery scissors, and say I've done it badly.

In the evenings there's been thunder, a distant bumping and stumbling, like God on a sullen binge.