I got very keen on biography because I wanted to change it. I wanted to stretch the form. I think of it as a way of capturing souls..

Ingratitude is the frost that nips the flower even as it opens, that shrivels the generous apple on the branch, that freezes the fountain in mid-flow….

Some sins have no season. We are as likely to be angry in November as to lose our rag in March ... There is, though, something autumnal about greed, ….