He fell over frequently, but he never cried, though the ice was hard, the hardest surface his bones had ever met. He taught himself to laugh instead. Laughing was a bit like crying. It was a strange convulsion; it just came from a different bit of your mind. The trick was to move the crying out of that bit and let the laughter in. And so he’d pick himself up and carry on, laughing.

Things are only white for a bit.’ Emilie.

This is the state to which I shall aspire, where what is important to me is already mine.

We have to become the people we always should have been.

I did have a beautiful life. It ended early, that’s all.

But such are our days. Such are the days and times of Every Man and, no matter how hard we work and strive, we can never know when something shall be given to us and when it will be taken away.

Music is so important in a human life. It finds a space inside us that nothing else touches.’ Gustav.

And he feels grateful that he has been left with this one substantial relic of all his years of service and thinks how sincerely he has deserved this. Yet he knows the world in which people deserve things or do not deserve them is passing away. Europe is at war. Fairness is now becoming a word without meaning.

How could such a picture be in a national newspaper The model had ridiculous breasts the size of pumpkins and lips fat and wet and all that she was wearing was a spangled G-string.

At the moment, I’m toying with a new idea for a book, but fully engaged with writing screenplays, so the book idea – which needs empty space in my head – is barely formed yet.