Death helps. Death gives us something to do. Because it's a full-time job looking the other way. - Martin Amis

Someone watches over us when we write. Mother. Teacher. Shakespeare. God.

Nowadays every business in America says how warm it is and how much it cares — loan companies, supermarkets, hamburger chains.

Kingsley fell over. And this was no brisk trip or tumble. It was an act of colossal administration. First came a kind of slow-leak effect, giving me the immediate worry that Kingsley, when fully deflated, would spread out into the street on both sides of the island, where there were cars, trucks, sneezing buses. Next, as I grabbed and tugged, he felt like a great ship settling on its side: would it right itself, or go under? Then came an impression of overall dissolution and the loss of basic physical coherence. I groped around him, looking for places to shore him up, but every bit of him was falling, dropping, seeking the lowest level, like a mudslide.