Talent is its own expectation, Jim: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever. Use it or lose it, he’d say over the newspaper.

Always and only the self out there, on court, to be met, fought, brought to the table to hammer out terms.

thing that will outlast him and you and me, but will help future people understand us — how we felt, how we lived, what we gave to each other and why.

Everyone should get at least one good look at the eyes of a man who finds himself rising toward what he wants to pull down to himself.

John Wayne is of the sock-and-a-shoe, sock-and-a-shoe school.

And who could not love that special and leonine roar of a public toilet?

Even the voice of Steeply had a different timbre inside the shadow. ‘They say it’s a great and maybe even timeless love, Rod Tine’s for your Luria person.’ Marathe grunted, shifting slightly in the chair. Steeply said ‘The sort that gets sung about, the kind people die for and then get immortalized in song. You got your ballads, your operas.

‘The integrity of my sleep has been forever compromised, sir.’

He has this way of looking warily to either side of him before he says anything.