Friends will hand over anything that is needed and think nothing of it! - William Golding

Если б было светло, они б сгорели со стыда. Но кругом чернела ночь.

"Excerpt from the endnote on the audiobook read by the author: "There have been so many interpretations of the story that I am not going to choose between them. Make your own choice. They contradict each other, the various choices. the only choice that really matters, the only interpretation of the story, if you want one, is your own. Not your teacher's, not your professor's, not mine, not a critic's, not some authority's. The only thing that matters is first, the experience of being in the story, moving through it. Then, any interpretation you like, if it is yours, that's the right one. Because what's in a book is not what an author thought he put into it, it's what the reader gets out of it.

The greatest pleasure is not - say - sex or geometry. It is just understanding. And if you can get people to understand their own humanity - well, that's the job of the writer.