“Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.”

“If God meant for pictures to be sent through the air He’d have never would have given us cinema. Or the national gallery.”

“There are official searchers, inquisitors. I have seen them in the performance of their function: they always arrive extremely tired from their journeys; they speak of a broken stairway which almost killed them; they talk with the librarian of galleries and stairs; sometimes they pick up the nearest volume and leaf through it, looking for infamous words. Obviously, no one expects to discover anything.”

“What is poetry which does not save nations or people?”

“He envied the bark, which had been, in the course of one lifetime, both forest and fire. One endured; one destroyed.”

“Gradually the mist had lifted, and the sun burst forth, a ball of fire radiating the sky with unnaturally incandescent hues. Coral was reminded of the strident brushwork and wild colours of the Fauvist paintings that filled her mother's gallery, which Coral had always loved. The scene was now set for the show to begin: the drama in which the broad, breath-taking landscapes of Africa were the stage and the animals the actors.”