Only the second-rate never make mistakes.

We must know when to move on. To search too long for perfection can also paralyse.

Even our garden lawn—most domesticated of foliage—needed mowing again almost as soon as it was done … like some lush, green five o’clock shadow.

A constant flickering confetti of butterflies showered the town of Darwin. Designer insects, I think of them now: there was something enormously wasteful, extravagant even, about the profusion of patterns and shapes and brilliant colours.

At home, my mother dabbed at her brow with a wet flannel she kept in the fridge for that purpose.

My affection for you does not depend on those small things.’Affection? To hear him admit it, to actually utter words of love, however understated, astonished me.