“The terror, which would not end for another 28 years-if it ever did end-began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.”

“The experts are right, he thought. Venice is sinking. The whole city is slowly dying. One day the tourists will travel here by boat to peer down into the waters, and they will see pillars and columns and marble far, far beneath them, slime and mud uncovering for brief moments a lost underworld of stone. Their heels made a ringing sound on the pavement and the rain splashed from the gutterings above. A fine ending to an evening that had started with brave hope, with innocence. ("Don't Look Now")”

“The Thames was cold and it was the colour of the dishwater at the end of the washing up. I remember looking up through it and seeing the light pale brown and far above and wondering if I would sink farther or float up to it. I stayed down for the longest time Osama. I wouldn't mind drowning but I did float up in the end. Somehow I always seem to.”

“Now rainbows, as you probably know, are bridges between the worlds. Which is why, whenever you see a rainbow, you can never really tell where it ends. It ends in another world. The rumor that there is a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow was started by trolls in order to lure beings from different dimensions into their own- where they would promptly mug them- thus creating their own pot of gold.”

“I stare at the stars... And even though there are so many and they look so close together, I know they are light years apart. The glitter in the sky looks as if I could scoop it all up in my hands and let the stars swirl and touch one another, but they are so distant, so very far apart, that they cannot feel the warmth of each other, even though they are made of burning.This is the secret of the stars, I tell myself. In the end, we are alone. No matter how close you seem, no one else can touch you.”

“Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road.”