True Intelligence Requires Fabulous Imagination.

I Believe The Novella Is The Perfect Form Of Prose Fiction. It Is The Beautiful Daughter Of A Rambling, Bloated Ill-shaven Giant (but A Giant Who's A Genius On His Best Days).

Nothing Was To Be Lost By Beginning At The Beginning.

London In The '70s Was A Pretty Catastrophic Dump, I Can Tell You. We Had Every Kind Of Industrial Trouble; We Had Severe Energy Problems; We Were Under Constant Terrorist Attack From Irish Terrorist Groups Who Had Started A Bombing Campaign In English Cities; Politics Were Fantastically Polarized Between Left And Right.

Cecilia Wondered, As She Sometimes Did When She Met A Man For The First Time, If This Was The One She Was Going To Marry, And Whether It Was This Particular Moment She Would Remember For The Rest Of Her Life - With Gratitude, Or Profound And Particular Regret.

One Could Drown In Irrelevance.