..because When We Look Up Into The

And When The Universe Has Finished Exploding All The Stars Will Slow Down, Like A Ball That Has Been Thrown Into The Air, And They Will Come To A Halt And They Will All Begin To Fall Towards The Centre Of The Universe Again. And Then There Will Be Nothing To Stop Us Seeing All The Stars In The World Because They Will All Be Moving Towards Us, Gradually Faster And Faster, And We Will Know That The World Is Going To End Soon Because When We Look Up Into The Sky At Night There Will Be No Darkness, Just The Blazing Light Of Billions And Billions Of Stars, All Falling.

At Teenage Parties He Was Always Wandering Into The Garden, Sitting On A Bench In The Dark . . . Staring Up At The Constellations And Pondering All Those Big Questions About The Existence Of God And The Nature Of Evil And The Mystery Of Death, Questions Which Seemed More Important Than Anything Else In The Would Until A Few Years Passed And Some Real Questions Had Been Dumped Into Your Lap, Like How To Earn A Living, And Why People Fell In And Out Of Love, And How Long You Could Carry On Smoking And Then Give Up Without Getting Lung Cancer.

From A Good Book, I Want To Be Taken To The Very Edge. I Want A Glimpse Into That Outer Darkness.

As To The Number Of Novels I've Abandoned... I Shudder To Think. I Have Thrown Away Five Completed Novels, And That's A Gruesome Enough Figure. But Not Necessarily A Waste Of Effort.

At 20, 25, 30, We Begin To Realise That The Possibilities Of Escape Are Getting Fewer. We Have Jobs, Children, Partners, Debts. This Is The Part Of Us To Which Literary Fiction Speaks.