The American idiom has much to offer us that the English language has never heard of

Sometimes I find myself thinking, rather wistfully, about Lao Tzu's famous dictum: 'Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish.' All around me I see something very different, let us say - a number of angry dwarfs trying to grill a whale.

But time in only another liar, so go along the wall a little further: if blackberries prove bitter there'll be mushrooms, fairy-ring mushrooms in the grass, sweetest of all fungi.

I'll write whatever I damn please, whenever I damn please and as I damn please and it'll be good if the authentic spirit of change is on it.

As birds' wings beat the solid air without which none could fly so words freed by the imagination affirm reality by their flight.

I pick the hair from her eyes and watch her misery with compassion.

There is nothing beginning nor end to the imagination but it delights in its own seasons reversing the usual order at will.