Jung was absolutely right about one thing. We are occupied by gods. The mistake is to identify with the god occupying you.

Kirpal's left hand swoops down and catches the dropped fork an inch from the floor and gently passes it into the fingers of his daughter, a wrinkle at the edge of his eyes behind his spectacles.

As a writer, one is busy with archaeology.

Before the real city could be seen it had to be imagined, the way rumours and tall tales were a kind of charting.

When we are young we do not look into mirrors. It is when we are old, concerned with our name, our legend, what our lives will mean to the future. We become vain with the names we own, our claims to have been the first eyes, the strongest army, the cleverest merchant. It is when he is old that Narcissus wants a graven image of himself.

What night gave Rafael was a formlessness in which everything had a purpose. As if darkness had a hidden musical language.

I see the poem or the novel ending with an open door.