Art is not a luxury. It stands at the essence of our humanity, and it asks for no special protection except the right to exist. - Salman Rushdie

Sometimes, people trying to commit suicide manage it in a manner that leaves them breathless with astonishment.

What had been (at the beginning) no bigger than a full stop had expanded into a comma, a word, a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter; now it was bursting into more complex developments, becoming, one might say, a book - perhaps an encylopaedia - even a whole language...

Did you know, ji,’ Zulu offered, ‘that the map of Tolkien’s Middle earth fits quite well over central England and Wales? Maybe all fairylands are right here, in our midst.