The Past Beats Inside Me Like A

In The City Of Flesh I Travel Without Maps, A Worried Tourist: And Ottilie Was A Very Venice. I Stumbled Lost In The Blue Shade Of Her Pavements. Here Was A Dreamy Stillness, A Swaying, The Splash Of An Oar. Then, When I Least Expected It, Suddenly I Stepped Out Into The Great Square, The Sunlight, And She Was A Flock Of Birds Scattering With Soft Cries In My Arms.

The Booker Prize Is A Big, Popular Prize For Big, Popular Books, And That's The Way It Should Be.

Enormous Morning, Ponderous, Meticulous; Gray Light Streaking Each Bare Branch, Each Single Twig, Along One Side, Making Another Tree, Of Glassy Veins.

I Have This Fantasy. I'm Walking Past A Bookshop And I Click My Fingers And All My Books Go Blank. So I Can Start Again And Get It Right.

There Are Times, They Occur With Increasing Frequency Nowadays, When I Seem To Know Nothing, When Everything I Know Seems To Have Fallen Out Of My Mind Like A Shower Of Rain, And I Am Gripped For A Moment In Paralysed Dismay, Waiting For It All To Come Back But With No Certainty That It Will.