“Like capitalism,” Carl suggested. “‘We’ll give you so much pleasure, you’ll never want to try another socioeconomic system.”

“In Rome the statues, in Paris the paintings, and in Prague the buildings suggest that pleasure can be an education.”

“It was strange that one couldn’t know in advance which places one was later going to wish to remember.”

“Unable to see, they were briefly seized by the characteristic Prague anxiety of never finding the entrance--of arriving at one's goal but remaining blocked from it by a wall or a stone on account of having overlooked an alley or medieval door a few dozen yards back, which has served as the approach so immemorially that no one any longer marked or described it.”

“Like capitalism,” Carl suggested. “‘We’ll give you so much pleasure, you’ll never want to try another socioeconomic system.”

“Crisis – the midwife of capitalism. The ‘advisers’ arrive and say, My god, they have no predatory class here. It is an emergency! We must create one immediately. Let us arrange to give everything to a few crooks. Then this country, too, will have a mess of parasites to rule it, to suck the value of the people’s labour.”

“I suppose it does come with a certain responsibility.”“What does?” asked Annie.“The magnificence of my person.”“Gah.”

“A year ago he had been in America. Two years ago he had been straight. Tonight he was underground, with the remains of the bogey man, lit by the torches of the children who had killed him.”

“He was in the flow of time now. He was in a story.”

“It’s a question of wanting to know how the story turns out. And one can only know that about one story, ever.”

“It is perhaps necessary for something dear to be lost.”“Why?”“Perhaps it is necessary to the making of a story. A story after all is a way of remembering love.”