Art, I subsequently realised, is like that. It softens by association and implication. It renders the hard pliable. It creates gaps, gaping holes really, in possibility.

And yet, in terms of its emotive potential, I still find art more attractive, currently, than books, which fail at a deeper level.

Sometimes the heart demands.

I regret, most of all, my shrivelled heart. So focused on the numbers. On the maths of my personal equation. Can a man change his heart? Are there ways to improve the spirit of who you are? Of why you choose?

The writers themselves … they were pitifully out of context. So self-assured, so assuming, so completely wrong. Unable – any of them – to imagine what might be coming.

The poverty of the villages is almost picturesque from the windows of a coach that is not stopping.

We are, after all, human. There is something wild in those opposable thumbs.

The visit, like all visits home for a long time now, has been an obscure failure. When is it we cease to be able to go back, truly go back? What secret door is it that closes?

Control is an advertising concept.

If the trees and the plants are brothers, if the birds are my sisters, then cats are truly my kin.

Artists could never, would never, harm anybody. They’re too busy painting. Same with ad drunks. They might be a bit useless at functional tasks, they may break things (small objects, precious objects, door handles, car accessories, and such), but they’re too pissed to get seriously involved in anything.

Intimacy, finally, had got the better of us.

We calculated the baseline requirement of diversity.