This Was Another Of Our Fears: That

In Life, Every Ending Is Just The Start Of Another Story.

Paris Is Certainly One Of The Most Boastful Of Cities, And You Could Argue That It Has Had A Lot To Boast About: At Various Times The European Centre Of Power, Of Civilisation, Of The Arts, And (self-advertisingly, At Least) Of Love.

We Live On The Flat, On The Level, And Yet - And So - We Aspire. Groundlings, We Can Sometimes Reach As Far As The Gods. Some Soar With Art, Others With Religion; Most With Love. But When We Soar, We Can Also Crash. There Are Few Soft Landings. We May Find Ourselves Bouncing Across The Ground With Leg-fracting Force, Dragged Towards Some Foreign Railway Line. Every Love Story Is A Potential Grief Story. If Not At First, Then Later. If Not For One, Then For The Other. Sometimes, For Both.

Well, They Each Seem To Do One Thing Well Enough, But Fail To Realize That Literature Depends On Doing Several Things Well At The Same Time.

(on Grief) And You Do Come Out Of It, That’s True. After A Year, After Five. But You Don’t Come Out Of It Like A Train Coming Out Of A Tunnel, Bursting Through The Downs Into Sunshine And That Swift, Rattling Descent To The Channel; You Come Out Of It As A Gull Comes Out Of An Oil-slick. You Are Tarred And Feathered For Life.