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“... Driving through the September rain the taxi driver didn’t say a word until a goat ran across the road. He came to a sudden stop, banged his fist on the windscreen, and intimated we were close to the spot where, sometime in the 1700s, a Fitzgerald had tied his father to a bear. Then we watched a forest march from east to west. We stayed there until it was time for him to talk to me again ...”

“... As a group we were somewhat vulnerable and are so today. My brother-in-law has fixed me a tower in the mill, from whose oriel I can see the bluebottles who nag heaven with their unimportance. But what are they expected to do? Raise families? Become deacons? If so my calculations collapse into bric-a-brac, my equations are undone. Across the road they are building a cement house ...”

“... Always, I am coming home from hunting frogs or standing in the swim of wind beneath the last dyke and the sea;                   and, always, she is there, in lanternglow, a light that makes this world believable. My eyes turned from the snuff of paraffin and darkness in that house so long ago, I barely know it’s gone: the washrooms rinsed with frost, a skewed moon picking out the paths from here to there where someone, not myself, still wanders, till I lie down in the warm and wait for her to come, her hands a labyrinth of mint and carrion, her book the only one I have, its pages fingerstained with daisychain and lilac, and such depth in the pictures, I would find The Snow Queen, or the Lady of the Lake so readily, I thought they must be mine ...”

“... The barber’s tubes and rubber bulbs, their wheezing scents, asthmatic talcs, have long since perished with the rest of his tribal paraphernalia; the Brylcreams set in misty jars and the almost medieval singeing straws, wax tapers with their red-hot buds that, smoking, sealed the ends of hairs and left the neck an acrid stem, smart meat, a stook of tendons ...”

“... Martial and Jonson frame my text, A pleasant catalogue of what Delights for you are to be got At lunch with me on Monday next: An avocado full of pink Prawns we will wash in a tide cleaner Than ocean – pale Gewürztraminer Chilled just to make the palate wink; A green world walled within a bowl, Unfallen leaves that crown their plate With which sweetly to celebrate Crispness of body, oil of soul; Then a pure red will come to seem Sublimer than that salad love – Ripe strawberries, like pictures of Kisses, quite innocent of cream ...”

“... A certain man flew from Chicago to his native Golden Vale To resurrect a recurring dream from his childhood. The dream: A Frenchman called Lavoisier Being cooked in a bath till he revealed The whereabouts of the long-lost philosopher’s stone – The stone which is not a stone. But his dream brought him to the attention Of the Angel of Fire Mountain, Who took him to the city of Prague To stand trial for an unspecified mortal sin Before Cardinals Silver, Iron, Tin and Lead ...”

“... Christmas, Grandad came down from the mountains, and we had to go fishing, on the ornamental lake. The ornery mental lake, that’s what I call it. ‘Do I have to, Pop? It’s just animal death!’ Fishing, fishing, till everything is killed. ‘How’s the love-life?’ Grandad asked. My father was having trouble, some affair that was going wrong ...”

“... Quest’è ’l verno, ma tal che gioia apporte Antonio Vivaldi If you think she exists like that, you should think again. It’s winter now, and love is not the question. Children see wolves through the trees and the beauty astounds them. Winter, they say; it’s winter, and joy is the question. Mistake her for what you will: when she stands in your path at evening, she is not the enemy you always hoped to find ...”

“... God Bless the ChildOf fathering, so little can be saidthat carries weight in this, or any world:the firstborn in his caulof ravensdown,the second, a capella from the realmof mole and sphagnum.Later, they repent and come to heelso gladly that the whole house swells with pride,a gown for her,a morning coat for him,lambswool and satin, midnight blueand gold,an ounce of civetstitched through every seam ...”

“... an element of the energy which makes attractive fictional monsters as disparate as Richard III and John Self. Chicago Loop (terrific title) is another book that has a cold, clear surface and a lurking nastiness underneath. Its central character, Parker Jagoda (terrific name), is a 37-year old architect-turned-developer who, unknown to his ...”

“... them. Amis’s most obvious assets as a writer are his ear (‘When you’re writing,’ he told John Haffenden, in an exchange published in Novelists in Interview, ‘you run it through your mind until your tuning-fork is still’) and his energy. In the quoted paragraph, both are as they always were; the lines are also characteristic in the completeness ...”

“... often.’ Margery Dayrell worried that her son Nathaniel could not sleep, though he was drowsy. John Windmill complained that he ‘cannot sleepe nor take any rest on his bed or up or Downe’. Hugh Thomson feared that his son, ‘who he supposeth to be taken or planet stroken’, had been unable to sleep the previous night. Broken and disrupted sleep could ...”

“... Tipped up inside the gleaming room Her wet hair streamed into the sink, Warm water shed its snorkeled bloom Onto her raw, responsive nape; Dead lathers left her in the pink, The bubbles made their charmed escape. The whole scene was detachable. Oatmeal and lemon, white and green, The towel fluffed on the cork-topped stool, The burst sachet, the malformed tube, The three sides of wet polythene That curtained the hygienic cube ...”

“... It might as well be gaslight now That soughs and pouches through the trees, Lost pockets of foxed sepia, The silver, pollen-haunted sneeze Of sunshine and magnesium Caught in the filter of her veil, Uplifted faces drained and dumb, Each smile a failing chemical That hovers in the nitrate’s mist Where moth-like cousins, lunar aunts In gauze and satin gloves persist Through acid-eaten radiance ...”

“... Psalm 139:23At one time,when there might have been a God,everything vaguelyconvent, dovesand serpents in the Treeof Knowledge, gospelwhispered down the galleriesof rain,I would have been awake for almostnothing in this perishable world,only a drift of rose, or cardamine,along the backroad home, wind in the trees,the angel half-revealed, improbable,lighting the hedge like a flamein the greenof morning ...”