The Underground Man

It is fascinating to speculate, is it not, on how the word generally gets about.

For each one of us the sun arcs through the sky at a different speed. For some creatures life must be but a series of shooting suns. Others must have but the one sun which takes a lifetime to rise and fall.

As the minutes crept by and the book-hunt pressed on I thought I saw him grow increasingly discouraged, until at last he stepped back from one shelf with an expression of great suspicion on his face – as if the books had been guilty of conspiring against him. He turned slowly, slowly … listening, it seemed, for the scurrying footfalls of his prey’s

the ingredients put me more in mind of gunpowder than any medicine,

a tale is remotely worth telling then one might tell it a dozen times.

The world, one might say, is nothing more than a vast burial ground on which we briefly picnic.

the Berry Man can scatter himself into a hundred disparate parts and a prying eye would see nothing but the same leaves and twigs as lie on any woodland floor. But once the prying eye has passed on the Berry Man draws himself back in. The scraps of bark slowly shift along the ground and are reintroduced to each other; the chill wind shuffles him in

I have always been very fond of dogs. Cats have much too high an opinion of themselves and generally make for poor company. Are, on the whole, utterly humourless and always wrapped up in their own thoughts. Some days I reckon all cats are spies.

the gradual revelation of one’s body as nothing more than a bag of unshakeable aches.