“The writers themselves … they were pitifully out of context. So self-assured, so assuming, so completely wrong. Unable – any of them – to imagine what might be coming.”

“We calculated the baseline requirement of diversity.”

“Intimacy, finally, had got the better of us.”

“If the trees and the plants are brothers, if the birds are my sisters, then cats are truly my kin.”

“Control is an advertising concept.”

“We are, after all, human. There is something wild in those opposable thumbs.”

“The writers themselves … they were pitifully out of context. So self-assured, so assuming, so completely wrong. Unable – any of them – to imagine what might be coming.”

“I regret, most of all, my shrivelled heart. So focused on the numbers. On the maths of my personal equation. Can a man change his heart? Are there ways to improve the spirit of who you are? Of why you choose?”

“Sometimes the heart demands.”

“And yet, in terms of its emotive potential, I still find art more attractive, currently, than books, which fail at a deeper level.”