I search for secrets and answers, no matter how bizarre, like an old woman reading tea-leaves. - J. M. Coetzee

Would you agree that Francis had a bit of a reputation? Did he sometimes exhibit unpredictable moods? Would you agree, Michael, that your brother possessed a history of violence?

The mistake the two of us made,’ I said, ‘was that we skimped the foreplay. I’m not blaming you, it was as much my fault as yours, but it was a fault nonetheless.

In a world of chance is there a better and a worse? We yield to a stranger's embrace or give ourselves to the waves; for the blink of an eyelid our vigilance relaxes; we are asleep; and when we awake, we have lost the direction of our lives. What are these blinks of an eyelid, against which the only defence is an eternal and inhuman wakefulness? Might they not be the cracks and chinks through which another voice, other voices, speak in our lives? By what right do we close our ears to them?