Miriam – I’ll give you any flowers you want!’ Rhapsodising over the thousand scents of her body, I exclaimed: ‘I’ll grow orchids from your hands, roses from your breasts. You can have magnolias in your...

How do you analyze that part of the dream, Anna?”…”I guess I’m nervous about my birthday.

Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination.

They thrived on the rapid turnover of acquaintances, the lack of involvement with others, and the total self-sufficiency of lives which, needing nothing, were never dissapointed.

Dissembling was so large a part of middle-class life that honesty and frankness seemed the most devious stratagem of all. The most outright lie was the closest one came to truth.

First she would try to kill him, but failing this give him food and her body, breast-feed him back to a state of childishness and even, perhaps, feel affection for him. Then, the moment he...

He methodically basted the dark skin of the Alsatian, which he had stuffed with garlic and herbs.”One rule in life”, he murmured to himself. “If you can smell garlic, everything is all right”.

However, for all his affection and loyalty towards the animal, the dog would soon be leaving him – they would both be present at a celebratory dinner when they reached the roof, he reflected with...