Fools, Most Linguists. Damn All To Say

It Is Also The Pardonable Vanity Of Lonely People Everywhere To Assume That They Have No Counterparts.

I Worked For Mi6 In The Sixties, During The Great Witch-hunts, When The Shared Paranoia Of The Cold War Gripped The Services.

And The Ideologies Trailed After These Impossible Events Like Condemned Prisoners, As Ideologies Do When They've Had Their Day. Because They Have No Heart Of Their Own. They're The Whores And Angels Of Our Striving Selves.

People Who've Had Very Unhappy Childhoods Are Pretty Good At Inventing Themselves. If Nobody Invents You For Yourself, Nothing Is Left But To Invent Yourself For Others.

To Possess Another Language, Charlemagne Tells Us, Is To Possess Another Soul. German Is Such A Language. Once You Have It In Your Head, You Can Go There Anytime, You Can Close The Door, You Have A Refuge.