Dawes? Dawes, do come back to earth and honour us with your attention for a moment.

Why are you so angry with your Duckling, harry? Don't you like it when I open my legs wide to you? Cross them over you - the way you like? What will you do when your little Duckling isn't there anymore to touch you with her soft fingertips, Harry, where you like it? First the left nipple and then the right. Your Duckling doesn't want to leave you, Harry."

"Duckling..."

"I need freedom sometimes, Harry.

It is very good, Wisehammer, it's very well written, but it's too-too-political. It will be considered provocative."

"You don't want me to say it."

"Not tonight. We have many people against us."

"I could tone it down. I could omit 'We left our country for our country's good.'"

"That's the best line.

The Greeks believed that it was a citizen's duty to watch a play. It was a kind of work in that it required attention, judgement, patience, all the social virtues."

"And the Greek were conquered by the more practical Romans, Arthur."

"Indeed, the Romans built their bridges, but they also spent many centuries wishing they were Greeks. And they, after all, were conquered by the barbarians, or by their own corrupt and small spirits.

This is a profligate prison for us all, it's a hellish hole we soldiers have been hauled to because they blame us for losing the war in America.

More than this, I believe that the only lastingly important form of writing is writing for children. It is writing that is carried in the reader's heart for a lifetime; it is writing that speaks to the future.