May I keep this book forever. May this book and this body outlast my love. May this book and this body love me as I love its length, its breadth, its… - Peter Greenaway

Esmerelda, the grieving widow, continues to burn and scream. In our minds we rush to save her from the consuming flames. But cannot.

These ideas are present in all sorts of unrelated cultures -- the Easter Islands, Celtic mythology, Plato's Symposium with its notion that we are all originally hermaphrodite. We became too arrogant and so the gods split us down the middle, forcing us to spend our lives chasing our other half. If we start being arrogant all over again, God will come down and split each half in half, and it will take four people to assemble a fifth, making our lives peculiarly, desperately difficult.

I have always had severe problems with Austrians. … Musical, churchy, uptight... nice legs... hypocritical... authoritarian... always insist their dustbins are very clean.