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

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.

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.

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.

After filming, I can't wait to shake off all that '50s primness. I'll go out to a gig and dance ridiculously. I love to lose myself in music. Just letting go - it's dead important.

When you're a brand new band, there's a tingly sort of feeling you get when you play a song that you just wrote.