The human brain has a natural ability, inherent in its mechanism, to work on many levels, in a process of constant promptings, in a type of self-preservation.If only humans understood...Most ignore it.

Is that how you__e supposed to find your soulmate and fall in love these days? By flirting in 140 character tweets and stalking each other__ social media pages?

I always thought falling in love was hard, but now I realize that was the easy bit. It__ staying in love that__ the hard part.

The contortions of the gargoyles were the only therapy we had.

Apparently, now, though, we writers and artists are not allowed to give offence. We must not question, criticise or insult the other, for fear of being hounded and murdered. These days a writer without bodyguards can hardly be considered serious. A bad review is the least of our problems.

Who can think of Larkin now without considering his fondness for the buttocks of schoolgirls and paranoid hatred of blacks _ Or Eric Gill__ copulations with more or less every member of his family, including the dog? Proust had rats tortured, and donated his family furniture to brothels; Dickens walled up his wife and kept her from her children; Lillian Hellman lied. While Sartre lived with his mother, Simone de Beauvoir pimped babes for him; he envied Camus, before trashing him. John Cheever loitered in toilets, nostrils aflare, before returning to his wife. P.G. Wodehouse made broadcasts for the Nazis; Mailer stabbed his second wife. Two of Ted Hughes__ lovers had killed themselves. And as for Styron, Salinger, Saroyan _ Literature was a killing field; no decent person had ever picked up a pen.