She is a wiry blanched creature with no beauty. Her expression reminds him of a crumpled letter – there is both sadness and anger in it.

He likes to think of himself as someone who can give quick clever answers to awkward questions. It is an important part of his self-esteem.

Felix has always believed that if there is one thing in life that is fated it is our birth, that far-fetched conspiracy of circumstances which have to occur in order for us to get born.

It’s our memories that teach us who we are.

Never leave home without your memories.

One consequence of ignorance is that it misdirects anger.

To tell a lie is to risk being caught out and there’s excitement in avoiding traps: it was an aspect of my childhood I was perhaps averse to relinquishing.

The act of creation, the impetus to undertake it, is always some kind of feeble attempt to understand one’s own creation, the nature of creation itself.

The temptation to betray a secret, always breathing its hot breath in your ear.

Power needs plots because plots are secret until they unfold and the most gratifying kind of power is holding onto an explosive secret.

The snow, the effect of concealment and secrecy it creates, makes him think of the brutality of the wartime legislation to forbid and violently extract secrets. It is as if the hushed white landscape is showing how sacrosanct are our secrets, how much of our vitality is bound up in them.

Everything sacred begins with a circle of motion.

Today she feels she is the master of her craft. Today she is free of the grinding tyranny of doubt. The voice that mocks her ambition. The voice that bites and slanders and causes her more heartache than any other voice. Today she is focused, she is exultant. Her every brushstroke like a wake of radiance. Today she can move the paint around the canvas at will. If only painting were like this every day. Without the sudden extinguishing of light, the collapsing of belief, the cursing and flailing, the knots and clenched fists in a world gone suddenly dark.

There they are. Dancing in a circle. Shadows swinging over the snow. Calling upon the ancestors. Each wearing the sacred shirt. Side stepping to the left in time to the echoing heartbeat of the drums and the echoing yearning of the songs. There they are. Dancing in a circle. Shadows swinging over the firelit snow. Calling upon the ancestors. Expecting something wonderful to happen. Everyone singing. We will live again. We will live again.

If you’re not going to feel how are you going to know what to think? Isn’t it in the nature of feeling to evolve thought?

Artists, like criminals, are dependent on a jury.

It’s in our dreams that we pull people towards us.

Esme skips on ahead. Jumping from one foot to the other, as if she can see markings on the ground he can’t. She is constantly jumping and skipping and twirling with the lightness of falling snow, looking up at him bright with questions, tugging on his hand, dashing off with all the speed her body is capable of and then skipping on the spot up ahead as if consecrating it for his arrival. It is so easy to make her happy that it seems like cheating at times.

At that moment the ghost dance seems to Zinnia like the relationship of two people who never quite consummate the love they feel for each other.

Every night I build a fire for you, Alowa. Every night I dance on the rooftop for you. Look at the flames, Alowa. Aren’t they beautiful? Look at the smoke. I’m dancing in the smoke, Alowa.

And who isn’t less innocent than they lead us to believe? That’s one of the fundamental truths about human nature.

The cabinets and shelves are a bright busy choreography of oils, shampoos, conditioners, scrubs, lotions, salts, unguents. Zinnia loves buying pots and bottles and tubes of alchemised essences that smell like yearning or intimacy on the skin.