I cannot remember back to a year in which I did not consider myself to be a writer, and the younger I was the bigger that capital 'W.

It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside.

We'll just have to find more flowers in the spring. That's when they bloom, tra la.

I'm finished with something, but I'm not beginning anything. That's wrong. When you finish something, you ought always to begin something new.

The silence in the room had width, height, depth, mass and substance.

And yet, even as she spoke, she knew that she did not wish to come back. not to stay, not to live. She loved the little yellow cottage more than she loved any place on earth. but she was through with it except in her memories.

Was life always like that? she wondered. A game of hide and seek in which you only occasionally found the person you wanted to be?