Neil Cross

The Booker thing was a catalyst for me in a bizarre way. It__ perceived as an accolade to be published as a __iterary_ writer, but, actually, it__ pompous and it__ fake. Literary fiction is often nothing more than a genre in itself. I__ always read omnivorously and often thought much literary fiction is read by young men and women in their 20s, as substitutes for experience.

Because this exact leaf had to grow in that exact way, in that exact place, so that precise wind could tear it from that precise branch and make it fly into this exact face at that exact moment. And, if just one of those tiny little things had never had happened, I'd never have met ya. Which makes this leaf the most important leaf in human history