You are not grateful. I do not care. Nor do I care that you care. Also, I do not show you the level from which I see this dynamic; and above all I do not crow to you. My silly friend, I have things to do.

I said to my muse as we paced the house, I was that child and grew up into this person. There was a problem too large to ignore. In having to face it, I did not overcome it, but nevertheless I became like this. The muse replied, now there is tumult everywhere but in your heart.

My sanctuary was a cool stone courtyard with a stone fountain and a towering jacaranda tree. The flowers would carpet the sandstone paving and gradually turn into a sweet smelling, fementing purple mush. I read books there, and smoked, and listened to the birds. The courtyard, I remember, had an echo which made all the sounds it contained magically immanent, or pregnant with a gently unutterable meaning. Later, when I was swirled away from that life into a new, unrecognizeable one, I found that this place had taken root in my body.

We dream, wistfully, of luxuries we cannot afford. For some, these are riches; for others, simplicity. Still others dream of self-pity and fear.

When I want to save time and resources, I I put things where those who need them can find them quickly. When I want to waste them, I follow the established procedures.

The courage to admit that there is nothing to do.

They just notice things when they have already happened, and cannot imagine anything happening that hasn't already.

A sense of injustice lies at the heart of each hypocritical act. This is why I urge you to dispense with your belief in justice.

I interrogate my heart, and I can find no justification for interpreting that tender feeling in any way at all; so why call it pain?

Only because his journal is about his life, he has run out of ideas. There are other lives.

I left it alone, and it grew, until one day I opened the door and saw that the room was both occupied and defended. I was then forced to enter into conversation with this thing.

I think they have won the day - they tour from one university to the next, they play at events with names like 'futur.fall', and they are smart artists - not really artists, but academics, they play the system. I don't know what they really contributed, but when I think of the kind of dull-normal artists often featured in a certain period piece magazine of pretentious journalism, describing with drab tenacity their technique of making various noises through various gimmicky means, and so ending up with sound pastiches of no real intensity or imagination, I think of them.

First you may be dismayed, she said. Do not falter, please persevere. Behind my deep sadness you will find a deeper happiness.

The song always struck me as a piece of defiant hubris - the kind of thing you might sing before being sucked straight into hell. There is something about it that suggests the character has not only failed to triumph except in his own mind, but that he has somehow failed to see beyond his own needs. One could imagine, perhaps, a very rich and unhappy man singing that song.

A solace is a quiet, private thing, a ripple in the heart, or at least, among the solaces, there is the one which consoles. That is a melting solace, the one which dissolves, and brings tears, and warmth, and a pain which we gladly endure because it is true enough.