I'm Going Mad, I Told Myself. Let

It Wasn't Torpor That Kept Her - She Was Often Restless To The Point Of Irritability. She Simply Liked To Feel That She Was Prevented From Leaving, That She Was Needed.

Four Or Five Years - Nothing At All. But No One Over Thirty Could Understand This Peculiarly Weighted And Condensed Time, From Late Teens To Early Twenties, A Stretch Of Life That Needed A Name, From School Leaver To Salaried Professional, With A University And Affairs And Death And Choices In Between. I Had Forgotten How Recent My Childhood Was, How Long And Inescapable It Once Seemed. How Grown Up And How Unchanged I Was.

How Can A Novelist Achieve Atonement When, With Her Absolute Power Of Deciding Outcomes, She Is Also God?

Love Doesn't Grow At A Steady Rate, But Advances In Surges, Bolts, Wild Leaps, And This Was One Of Those.

It Troubles Him To Consider The Powerful Currents And Fine-tuning That Alter Fate, The Close And Distant Influences, The Accidents Of Character And Circumstance.