Between its vandyke teeth, in the mouth opened in a roar too terrible to be heard, it had a black tongue. - Nadine Gordimer

If somebody is partly frivolous or superficial, has moments of cruelty or self-doubt, I don’t write them off, because I think that absolutely everybody has what are known as human failings.

The facts are always less than what really happened.

The young man outside. But he is not part of the unreality; he is for good now. Odd…somewhere there was an idea that he, that living with him, was part of the holiday, the strange places. [...] The heat of shame mounted through her legs and body and sounded in her ears like the sound of sand pouring. Pouring, pouring. She sat there, sick. A weariness, a tastelessness, the discovery of a void made her hands slacken their grip, atrophy emptily, as if the hour was not worth their grasp. She was feeling like this again. She had thought it was something to do with singleness, with being alone and belonging too much to oneself.

She sat there not wanting to move or speak, or to look at anything even; so that the mood should be associated with nothing, no object, word, or sight that might recur and so recall the feeling again….Smuts blew in grittily, settled on her hands. Her back remained at exactly the same angle, turned against the young man sitting with his hands drooping between his sprawled legs, and the lion, fallen on its side in the corner.

The train had cast the station like a skin. It called out to the sky, I’m coming, I’m coming; and again, there was no answer.