To live at all is miracle enough.

For what use are books to anyone whose days are like a rook's nest with every twig a duty.

Yet not with all of me am I in love. Too much of my own quietness is with me.

As I see it, life is an effort to grip before they slip through one's fingers and slide into oblivion, the startling, the ghastly or the blindingly exquisite fish of the imagination before they whip away on the endless current and are lost for ever in oblivion's black ocean.

Something to remember, that: cats for missiles.

Years on end, and swords on end - where will it end, if our ears unbend - what shall I spend on a wrinkled friend in a pair of tights like a bunch of lights?

There are times when the air that floats between mortals becomes, in its stillness and silence, as cruel as the edge of a scythe.