For Death is the meaning of night;The eternal shadowInto which all lives must fall, All hopes expire.

I had retained little of what is generally called religion, except for a visceral conviction that our lives are controlled by some universal mechanism that is greater than ourselves. Perhaps that was what others called God. Perhaps not.

The summer passed quietly. I busied myself as best I could, reading a good deal.

The boundaries of this world are forever shifting – from day to night, joy to sorrow, love to hate, and from life itself to death; and who can say at what moment we may suddenly cross over the border, from one state of existence to another, like heat applied to some flammable substance? I have been given my own ever-changing margins, across which I move, continually and hungrily, like a migrating animal. Now civilized, now untamed; now responsive to decency and human concern, now viciously attuned to the darkest of desires.

After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn’s for an oyster supper.

I long for sleep, and for soft English rain. But they do not come.