I..." He struggled to answer. "When everything was quiet, I went up to the corridor and the curtain in the livingroom was open just a crack... I could see outside. I watched, only for a few seconds." He had not seen the outside world for twenty-two months. There was no anger or reproach. It was Papa who spoke. How did it look?" Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment. "There were stars," he said. "They burned by eyes.

I'm gonna hunt my life down and grab it.

Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.

I think to be writer you have to enjoy being alone. I was a loner as a teenager and was always drawn to characters in books and films who were at the fringes.

It was one of those moments of perfect tiredness, of having conquered not only the work at hand, but the night who had blocked the way.

So much good, so much evil. Just add water.

Could she smell my breath? Could she hear my cursed circular heart beat revolving like the crime it is in my deathly chest?