After all this time, I know exactly where I belong.

It's not that he lacked poetry. But his poetry was of the body, not the mind. He spoke it in the way he moved, the way he held a hammer, rowed a boat, built a fire. I, on the other hand, was like a brain in a box, a beating heart in a coal scuttle.

Such a courageous boy I was. To act brazenly under scrutiny and risk further injury to my wounded heart. Ah, the resilience, the blind, dumb persistence of youth.

The imagination can be dangerous. It can change the world. And that is why we write.

If you have the patience to wait and watch, history will reshape truth (weakest of all forces, and weightless) in the image of opinion. What really happened will cease to matter and, eventually, cease to exist.

Now let's try to understand that falling into sexual and emotional thrall with an underage blood relative hadn't exactly been on my list of Things to Do while visiting England,but I was coming around to the belief that whether you liked it or not, Things Happen and once they start happening you pretty much just have to hold on for dear life and see where they drop you when they stop.

I felt a momentary urge to leap into the sea and swim free of the present.