“He had long been curious at leaders intermittent calls for a return to past values and had tested the notion by trying to build a house from the sky downwards”

“The clerk tripped on the carpet, hit a window and went through, carrying with him a vase which had been on the sill. His skull broke like the vase and the vase broke like his skull, and both burst forth water mainly, and from the vase some flowers. If I could choose a death I’d make it something like that, except I’d add a good woman and some lard.”

“On July 13, 1994, Lint had a near-death experience, followed immediately by death.”

“Let us forget the past - this is the only way to be genuinely surprised.”

“Since childhood I’d been suspected of imagination”

“I knew books could see people around them, they ground their tiny teeth, tried to rattle like windows, stories to tell.”

“Seemed she should learn to smile when she was unhappy, to stop laughing, to speak up, to never speak to strangers, to share guilt for the acts of strangers, that strangers made the laws of the land, that the laws of the land valued things over life, that life ended if a stranger decided it, to be where she could be found, to feel one thing and do another. How could she hang so many contradictions in one skull”