Our souls are made of water, Goethe says. So too, our bodies. There is a flow within us, rising and falling, unidirectional, to the heart. there is a….

But then life is never neat, it is made up of doors and trapdoors. You move down baroque corridors, and even when you think you know which door to op….

If literary fiction is reduced to only middle-class families dealing only with middle-class angst, then it’s really finished as a force for grappling….

If man had a sense of proportion, he would die of shame..