Strange how paranoia can link up with reality now and then.

He sat watching the people go by, wondering how a thing of this sort could have come about, I must have let myself get mixed up in something horrible, he thought ... Probably she's the one who did it; I have no control of myself or anything that's happened. So now I'm waking up. I'm awake, he thought ... I've been destroyed and now that I'm awake all I can do is realize it ... The shock of getting up there and telling that account made me see. Mixture of lies and bits of truth. Woven together. Unable to see where each starts.

It really seems to me that in the midst of great tragedy, there is always the horrible possibility that something terribly funny will happen.

In one of the most brilliant papers in the English language Hume made it clear that what we speak of as 'causality' is nothing more than the phenomenon of repetition. When we mix sulphur with saltpeter and charcoal we always get gunpowder. This is true of every event subsumed by a causal law in other words, everything which can be called scientific knowledge. "It is custom which rules ," Hume said, and in that one sentence undermined both science and philosophy .

Can we consider the universe real, and if so, in what way?

He started keeping a journal - had been, in fact, secretly doing so for some time: the furtive act of a deranged person.

But an artist, he realized. Or rather so-called artist. Bohemian. That's closer to it. The artistic life without the talent.