One minute you've got a lucky star watching over you and the next instant it's done a bunk.

[What Rushdie took away from reading Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum]: Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be ruthless. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things--childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves--that go on slipping like sand, through our fingers.

I'm too much of a coward to kill myself. And too much of a coward to live

Mama, I know you used to ride the bus. Riding the bus and it__ hot and bumpy and crowded and too noisy and more than anything in the world you want to get off and the only reason in the world you don__ get off is it__ still fifty blocks from where you__e going? Well, I can get off right now if I want to, because even if I ride fifty more years and get off then, it__ the same place when I step down to it. Whenever I feel like it, I can get off. As soon as I__e had enough, it__ my stop. I__e had enough.

I realize how depraved it was to instill false guilt in an innocent child's conscience, causing a distorted image of life, God, & self, leaving little if any feeling of personal worth.

Oh no!_ replies Monsieur Tuvache indignantly. __e__e not murderers, you know. You have to understand that__ prohibited. We supply what is needed but people do the deed themselves. It__ their affair. We are just here to offer a service by selling quality products,_ continues the shopkeeper, leading the customer towards the checkout.