Cruel Men Cry Easily At The Cinema.

Life Would Go Out In A 'fraction Of A Second' (that Was The Phrase), But All Night He Had Been Realizing That Time Depends On Clocks And The Passage Of Light. There Were No Clocks And The Light Wouldn't Change. Nobody Really Knew How Long A Second Of Pain Could Be. It Might Last A Whole Purgatory--or For Ever.

I Envied Those Who Could Believe In A God And I Distrusted Them. I Felt They Were Keeping Their Courage Up With A Fable Of The Changeless And The Permanent. Death Was Far More Certain Than God, And With Death There Would Be No Longer The Possibility Of Love Dying.

All Good Novelists Have Bad Memories. What You Remember Comes Out As Journalism; What You Forget Goes Into The Compost Of The Imagination.

If You Live In A Place For Long You Cease To Read About It.

Death Never Mattered At Those Times - In The Early Days I Even Used To Pray For It: The Shattering Annihilation That Would Prevent For Ever The Getting Up, The Putting On Of Clothes, The Wathchign Her Torch Trail Across To The Opposite Side Of The Common Like The Tail-light Of A Low Car Driving Away.