“Andrew had a gift for deepening the incision he began.”

“Every person on earth has a gift," he began. "In some, the gift manifests itselfspontaneously; others have to work to discover what it is.”

“If life was an arc of light that began in darkness, ended in darkness, the first part of his life had happened in ordinary glare. Here it was as though hehad found a polarized lens that deepened and intensified all seen through it.”

“Andrew indulged in a little fantasy in which his father dropped dead, gunned down by an invisible sniper. Andrew visualised himself patting his sobbing mother on the back while he telephoned the undertaker. He had a cigarette in his mouth as he ordered the cheapest coffin.”

“He had every gift but the gift of years”

“A crisscross of light and shadow began to form on the pavement in front of him, and it was a beautiful thing to behold, he felt, a small, unexpected gift on the heels of such sadness and pain.”