“I had begun to think my ripening body would wither untasted on the vine.”

“Already, what would become my tribe had begun to die off.”

“I was becoming addicted to Bombay. There was squalor and poverty, but I had begun to realise my good fortune and would never again forget it.”

“Is it my power ripening or the natural will of a man to want to control what he thinks is his? It didn’t matter. Blood would paint the streets if another touched her.”

“My very existence, my life in the world, seemed like a hallucination. A strong wind would make me think my body was about to be blown to the end of the earth, to some land I had never seen or heard of, where my mind and body would separate forever. “Hold tight,” I would tell myself, but there was nothing for me to hold on to.”

“An expectation was there, mixed in with so many other emotions - excitement, resignation, hesitation, confusion, fear - that would well up then wither on the vine. You're optimistic one moment, only to be racked the next by the certainty that it will all fall to pieces. And in the end it does.”