Sarah Waters

But the more I think it, the more I want her, the more my desire rises and swells.

With every step I took away from her, the movement at my heart and between my legs grew more defined: I felt like a ventriloquist, locking his protesting dolls in to a trunk.

They might be kind, I thought. They might be sensible and good. They will not be like you. But I did not say it. I knew it would mean nothing to her. I said something - something ordinary and mild, I cannot think what. And after a time she came and kissed my cheek, and then she left me.

She closed her eyes and let the rain fall on her face, and after another second, I could not have said what were raindrops, and what tears.

And perhaps there is a limit to the grieving that the human heart can do. As when one adds salt to a tumbler of water, there comes a point where simply no more will be absorbed.

She said that that was the disadvantage of bringing creatures into the house: one grew used to them, and then, one had the upset of their loss.

Don't panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick succession, the derisive reviews, the friends' embarrassment, the failing career, the dwindling income, the repossessed house, the divorce . . . Working doggedly on through crises like these, however, has always got me there in the end. Leaving the desk for a while can help. Talking the problem through can help me recall what I was trying to achieve before I got stuck. Going for a long walk almost always gets me thinking about my manuscript in a slightly new way. And if all else fails, there's prayer. St Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers, has often helped me out in a crisis. If you want to spread your net more widely, you could try appealing to Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, too.

The day had begun to feel tinny: a pretend day, a dream day, that for some unaccountable reason she had to go on and on with as if it were real.

For she was the only one, of all of them, to have spared me a pleasant word; and suddenly I longed for time to pass, not for its own sake, but as it would take me back to her.

She said, 'It is filled with all the words for how I want you.

It is a world that is made of love. Did you think there is only the kind of love your sister has for her husband? Did you think there must be here, a man with whiskers, and over here, a lady in a gown? Haven't I said, there are no whiskers and gowns where spirits are? And what will your sister do if her husband should die, and she should take another? Who will she fly to then, when she has crossed the spheres? For she will fly to someone, we will all fly to someone, we will all return to that piece of shining matter from which our souls were torn with another, two halves of the same.

Don't you be thinking,' she says, 'on things that are done and can't be changed. All right, dear girl? You think of the time to come.

She wished for a moment that they were all children again. It still seemed extraordinary to her, that everything had turned out the way it had.

But, here was a curious thing. The more I tried to give up thinking of her, the more I said to myself, 'She's nothing to you', the harder I tried to pluck the idea of her out of my heart, the more she stayed there.

I felt that thread that had come between us, tugging, tugging at my heart__o hard, it hurt me.

Marriages are like pianos. They go in and out of tune.

Why do gentlemen's voices carry so clearly, when women's are so easily stifled?

She scissored the curls away, and - toms, grow easily sentimental over their haircuts, but I remember this sensation very vividly - it was not like she was cutting hair, it was as if I had a pair of wings beneath my shoulder-blades, that the flesh had all grown over, and she was slicing free...