Friendship is one friend betraying another friend to a third friend. With a fond friendly smile. The greater the betrayal, the greater the intimacy - the greater the friendship.

No one is exempt
and everyone's pain has a different smell.

At night, when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs

and read about themselves—
in colour, with their eyelids shut.

Great writers arrive among us like new diseases -- threatening, powerful, impatient for patients to pick up their virus, irresistible.

He was making music - Howells, Finzi, Holst - so you could see the sounds in the serried air.

Serried. Then just as suddenly empty when his sound-proof right hand closed off the notes.

Caro remembered how it was to lie so unself-consciously next to her best friends. Her aging body recalled the singular comfort of just being in bed next to Vivi's and Teensy's and Necie's bodies. It had been like no comfort she had ever taken from a man, not from her husband, or from the two lovers she'd had during her marriage. As she thought of her friends, she wished they could sprawl like that once more, their old-lady bodies touching, their varicosed legs thrown over one another's, toes touching, their scents mingling. The tribe, together again.

DezPierre glowered up at Olden but graciously bowed as he introduced himself.
"At your service, father of Sir Tarek. I am DezPierre of the Okbold clan. Head liason of Jolly Orchard and caretaker of Miss Alyra of Belluvita. If you cannot treat my mistress with the respect she deserves, you will deal with my swift vengeance.