“Writing is like going underwater - thank you for being there when I come back up.”

“Carefully, he reached around her with both arms so his fingers locked across her back.'You have to squeeze,' she whispered, 'or it's not a hug.”

“Perhaps you think too hard about what words you're going to use and how to make your mouth say them.”

“After a long while he sat upright with great effort, exhaled a sigh and reached for a clean sheet of lined paper, smoothing it out on the desk. He unscrewed the lid of his fountain pen, laid it perpendicular to his paper, and began to write. Often he compared his writing to white water. He had only to leap in to be dragged away on its rapids, thrown this way and that with his own will rendered impotent. While writing he found the words came from the muscles in his hands, the feel of the shaft of his pen, the locked joint of his elbow. the scratching noise of the nib marking paper and, underneath all that, some coordinating impulse in his guts. Certainly not from his mind.”

“He imagined dying and being cut open and there were all his bones and muscles and his bared arteries and capillaries leading to a cavity in his chest where instead of a heart he had his camera.”

“The sunset like a blacksmith, was beating the sky into glowing red blades.”

“Beeches stood aghast in pools of shed leaves. Silver poplars looked like moonbeams.”