“The black ice of that dark fortress received the sunlight like a mortal wound.”

“Nobody can judge an internal injury by the size of the superficial wound.”

“After a winter's gestation in its eggshell of ice, the valley had beaked its way out into the open, moist and yellow.”

“Nobody can judge an internal injury," he had said, "by the size of the superficial wound, of the hole.”

“a simple dream, set in a city park, along an avenue of mature elms, whose overarching branches turned the avenue into a green tunnel into which the sky and the sunlight were dripping, here and there, through the perfect imperfections in the canopy of leaves.”

“human beings do not perceive things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capable only of fractured perceptions”

“Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings. Like many millions of people, I am a bastard child of history. Perhaps we all are, black and brown and white, leaking into one another, as a character of mine once said, like flavours [sic] when you cook”