All A Work Of Art

Most Crime Fiction, No Matter How 'hard-boiled' Or Bloodily Forensic, Is Essentially Sentimental, For Most Crime Writers Are Disappointed Romantics.

The Telephone Ringing Gave Me A Dreadful Start. I Have Never Got Used To This Machine, The Way It Crouches So Malevolently, Ready To Start Clamouring For Attention When You Least Expect It, Like A Mad Baby.

All Art At A Certain Level Is Entertainment. We Go To A Tragedy By Sophocles To Be Entertained.

And Indeed Nothing Had Happened, A Momentous Nothing, Just Another Of The Great World's Shrugs Of Indifference.

Happiness Was Different In Childhood. It Was So Much Then A Matter Simply Of Accumulation, Of Taking Things - New Experiences, New Emotions - And Applying Them Like So Many Polished Tiles To What Would Someday Be The Marvellously Finished Pavilion Of The Self.