It was so like old times that Henry found himself smiling down at Olek and Mance, playing to her, capable of ignoring the rest. It did seem for those seconds that the earth had at last been pacified by music.

It's only when you abandon your ambitions that they become possible.

The principle was, death should not be entered like some snug harbor. It should be an unambiguous refusal to surrender.

So I was very close to ordination. I was delighted to be ordained a deacon, which is the last step between, before becoming a priest. But then it all fell apart.

Though, as he was torn into a pink upper air, she was a good craft to ride in, for her belly was firm and her breasts enabled a flying man good hold and emotions of heady safety. . . . Steering her peasant tits he bounded off stars.

And I found both literature and the church very dramatic presences in the world of the 1950s.

And I think my sexuality was heavily repressed by the church, by the, you know, the design of the mortal sins.