After a winter's gestation in its eggshell of ice, the valley had beaked its way out into the open, moist and yellow. - Salman Rushdie

A man who catches History's eye is thereafter bound to a mistress from whom he will never escape.

One of the things a writer is for is to say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable and ask difficult questions.

Fictions could be as powerful as histories, revealing the new people to themselves, allowing them to understand their own natures and the natures of those around them, and making them real. This was the paradox of the whispered stories: they were no more than make-believe but they created the truth, and brought into being a city and an army with all the rich diversity of nonfictional people with deep roots in the actually existing world.