And The Rest Is Rust And Stardust.

I Was Weeping Again, Drunk On The Impossible Past.

The Term "bend Sinister" Means A Heraldic Bar Or Band Drawn From The Left Side (and Popularly, But Incorrectly, Supposed To Denote Bastardy). This Choice Of Title Was An Attempt To Suggest An Outline Broken By Refraction, A Distortion In The Mirror Of Being, A Wrong Turn Taken By Life, A Sinistral And Sinister World. The Title's Drawback Is That A Solemn Reader Looking For "general Ideas" Or "human Interest" (which Is Much The Same Thing) In A Novel May Be Led To Look For Them In This One.

Some People—and I Am One Of Them—hate Happy Ends. We Feel Cheated. Harm Is The Norm. Doom Should Not Jam. The Avalanche Stopping In Its Tracks A Few Feet Above The Cowering Village Behaves Not Only Unnaturally But Unethically.

I Witness With Pleasure The Supreme Achievement Of Memory, Which Is The Masterly Use It Makes Of Innate Harmonies When Gathering To Its Fold The Suspended And Wandering Tonalities Of The Past.

My Principal Failing As A Writer Is The Lack Of Spontaneity; The Nuisance Of Parallel Thoughts, Second Thoughts, Third Thoughts; Inability To Express Myself Properly In Any Language Unless I Compose Every Damned Sentence In My Bath, In My Mind, At My Desk.