Life piles up so fast that I have no time to write out the equally fast rising mound of reflections.

The art of writing has for backbone some fierce attachment to an idea.

The current flows fast and furious. It issues in a spate of words from the loudspeakers and the politicians. Every day they tell us that we are a free people fighting to defend freedom. That is the current that has whirled the young airman up into the sky and keeps him circulating there among the clouds. Down here, with a roof to cover us and a gasmask handy, it is our business to puncture gasbags and discover the seeds of truth.

Our friends - how distant, how mute, how seldom visited and little known. And I, too, am dim to my friends and unknown; a phantom, sometimes seen, often not. Life is a dream surely.

I see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river, to me you're everything that exists; the reality of everything.

I am volatile for one, rigid for another, angular as an icicle in silver, or voluptuous as a candle flame in gold.

To whom can I expose the urgency of my own passion?…There is nobody—here among these grey arches, and moaning pigeons, and cheerful games and tradition and emulation, all so skilfully organised to prevent feeling alone.