“That’s nothing. To impress a polar bear I met in Switzerland, I once got on two tiny sticks and flew down a snow-covered mountain.”

“Go with polar bears, I say to myself. Polar bears at the North Pole. Baby polar bears scooting along after their mothers in the snow. Polar bears drinking Coca-Cola.”

“I saw a white toilet, with no plumbing, alone in a field of snow. Well, almost alone. There were two naked albinos and a polar bear sitting on it, and I felt inspired to write a love poem.”

“He once told me about polar bears - what solitary animals they are. They mate just once a year. One time in a whole year. There is no such thing as a lasting male-female bond in their world. One male polar bear and one female polar bear meet by sheer chance somewhere in the frozen vastness, and they mate. It doesn't take long. And once they are finished, the male runs away from the female as if he is frightened to death: he runs from the place where they have mated. He never looks back - literally. The rest of the year he lives in deep solitude. Mutual communications - the touching of two hearts - do not exist for them. So, that is the story of polar bears - or at least it is what my employer told me about them.'How very strange.'Yes, it is strange. I remember asking my employer, ' Then what do polar bears exist for?' ' Yes, exactly,' he said with a big smile. 'Then what do we exist for?”

“The faeries are kind of Switzerland with a big stick.”

“Cold and silence. Nothing quieter than snow. The sky screams to deliver it, a hundred banshees flying on the edge ofthe blizzard. But once the snow covers the ground, it hushes as still as my heart.”