Take it that you have died today, and your life's story is ended; and henceforward regard what future time may be given you as uncovenanted surplus, and live it out in harmony with nature.

Every day is a lie. But you are dying. That is not a lie.

Life is too short to eat vanilla ice cream and dance with boring men.

Isn't it delightful to forget how old we are?

In bed that night with the lights out and the cool room swimming with moonlight, Anthony lay awake and played with every minute of the day like a child playing in turn with each one of a pile of long-wanted Christmas toys.

In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.

It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.

And lastly from that period I remember riding in a taxi one afternoon between very tall buildings under a mauve and rosy sky; I began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again.

I feared so-you're sentimental. You're not like me. I'm a romantic little materialist. I'm not sentimental-I'm as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last-the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won't.

It was too late - everything was too late. For years now he had dreamed the world away, basing his decisions upon emotions unstable as water.

So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home.

But magic must hurry on, and the lovers remain...