Now I know that she is not beautiful, she is even more beautiful. I think I understand why: Not gifted with natural beauty, she has colluded with her imagination. In compensation, she has mushroomed forth extraordinary beauty. Only the crippled can run like that.

Each piece of beauty we make is a distress signal.

'Approach your fears', I told her, but I was being too dramatic. If I could restate my advice, I would say, 'Fear is only useful to you if it remains unnamed. But if you must name it, shunt it aside.' It's easy to say that, but harder to do it. How do you shunt aside fear? Apply yourself to that question and see what comes up.

You haven't changed much from your fifteen-year-old self, you know. Has it been a long time since you did that thing you used to do? That child will have its revenge.

What is the point of it? That luminously bleak question emerges from the mist whenever the lustre of each new technology begins to wear off. We do not find ourselves newly adrift in a new world beyond meaning and purpose. We are still adrift in the old world, where meaning never existed. Why should you not then merrily improvise on the theme of your own delusions whatever they are? Do you need a reason? If so, fine: let that be your delusion.