“... or deferral. He sat tightly contained on the far side of his big desk. He was pale. Alarmed. He may have been a priest. Tears poured down my face. I told him of my mother’s outlandish little red car coat. He was not a chaotic person. A large feeling of cul-de-sac filled the room. Beyond that I can recover only a few mental screenshots of me speaking about ...”

“... The Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe had already been leaked when Either/Or came out in May. Going on tour allowed me to meet readers twenty years younger than myself, to realise how much more clearly they see the hierarchies, how ready they are to dismantle them. The definition of ‘politics’ that I grew up with is not long for this world. The ...”

“... at Crowe’s door. When Crowe got him to sit still long enough he couldn’t stop talking, which may or may not have had something to do with the industrial amounts of pharmaceutical cocaine he was daily ingesting. He had become almost an abstraction in the dry California air: surrounded by stubbly country-rock cowboys and ...”

“... I flicked a pair of glittering ladybirds as they mated on the curled leaf of an apple tree, in ...”

“... but train dirty, that’s perfection, let’s rank and yank                there may be some hardship, sure, but we’ll be free                and the technical helpdesk thanks me for ‘reaching ...”

“... proud of, hick culture functionaries in this distant corner of Oceania. Stand-offish though she may have affected to be, I walked directly over to where she was standing and said, – Is the onion meant to discourage the plague of suitors who will be drawn like moths to the radiance of your beauty? She barely acknowledged that I was even there, turning her ...”

“... that study’s a means, not an end, and aspiration’s the vehicle, not the goal, and humility may be counter-productive, and even the truth isn’t always the answer. And in the morning I breakfasted on stones. And the days went by, the days became weeks, and, knowing that patience was a virtue invaluable to a man, I waited, hourly expecting my honest ...”

“... lovers have left no room on the verso, who damply dream of gravestones and each other’s names May mine alone attract thy pensive eye! On a night like this, God help poor sailors and lovers too, and the Reverend William, who wishes it all further. As if the Mata weren’t further than ever God’s writ ran till the day before yesterday, and He outnumbered ...”

“... We have both travelled: south, east, west. I go north now, quite near, where on the first of May our earth relaxes and its rivers flow: there I want nothing but to stay, and stay. I could fly further; I’ve been free for years, but don’t migrate, for always there outside in all the infinite other hemispheres there’d be more sights from which I’d ...”

“... or I have the capacity to imagine, resolving themselves into that one ‘sensitive chord’, which may one day come to be a text entitled ...”

“... on the armof Abraham with his curled moustache (the swine:he’ll leave her, of course) we may inspect the drainpipe:not the authentic late-Victorian drainpipebut just where that one was, convincing proof(together with the gatepost and the windows)that this is it, all right: the very house –unless it’s not; unless that was a stand-in,one the ...”

“... or couldn’t fancy down the feeling before dinner.Just halt there in the wind, as so often death may come upon one of these days caught by a note fired three timesthen resumed in front of his own attention, a life to be heldon the other side of the wound after things rigidly said,without saying which is such fun for all of that wavingin a burst of unsuitable ...”

“... blows a hole through, again blows, again with spite, again, until no more horn, none. * Corinna in May pushed a rus ty nail deep in the soil of her sick gardenia. All through the dark months leaftips curled. What buds appeared were sickly pale. As a consumptive heroine in winter light so fared and failed Corinna’s plant. In June, beside the burbling ...”

“... Took a turn or two across a plot of May, to where he saw wild thyme, some clustered oxlips, bunches of riviniana violets. And, the way Adam put it, their bodies seemed incorporate with their names. Cobwebs, sticky on cut fingers. Tongues caught up in the sweet lexemes. So, speaking leaves, he said: ‘Commend me to this Mistress Squash, your mother ...”

“... accountants, and bullies, Which sounds as if they won’t be much fun ... Though I dare say they may get to set up some gang-bangs after a bit, Involving privileged backstage foxes like the Queen, and Thatcher and Indira Gandhi, To keep everyone amused, and to try & keep something happening ... like the human race. This fandango is currently being hyped ...”