Truly, man was not made to live alone! — J. M. Coetzee

How can I accept that disaster has overtaken my life when the world continues to move so tranquilly through its cycles?

It is the knowledge of how contingent my unease is, how dependent on a baby that wails beneath my window one day and does not wail the next, that brings the worst shame to me, the greatest indifference to annihilation.

The new men of Empire are the ones who believe in fresh starts, new chapters, clean pages; I struggle on with the old story, hoping that before it is finished it will reveal to me why it was that I thought it worth the trouble.