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“... arrived in your room? We all know what the butterfly represents. I granted my own mother a cabbage-white. On the Dooaghtry cairn which commemorates God knows whom a tortoiseshell alighted To sun itself. It had been wintering In memory’s outhouse and escaped the wren. Petalwort For Michael Viney You want your ashes to swirl ...”

“... and not yet twenty. A shimmering girl with polished nails and a soft creamy face, who washed her white blonde hair with pink strawberry shampoo. When she was little, her hair caught fire and her older sister poured water over her. After that it was short for a while. There is a photo of her with my sister, both in pyjamas with powdered faces long past ...”

“... and plausibly interpreted for us. ‘The inanimate body of poor Robert was consigned to the white waters of the gulf … and I gazed out over the great waste of waters with a spirit that was indeed disconsolate.’ In the film we see the wake of the ship, the sack with the body floating in the gleaming water, but it doesn’t translate into an ...”

“... on my mind. On the radio, the National Front put their case in five minutes. The fiction of an all-white Albion, deludedness and control, like my landlady’s white-haired old bitch, who confuses home with the world, pees just inside the door, and shits trivially in a bend in the corridor. Mr Thatcher made his pile by ...”

“... Mephisto 5I AM A GOD WITH A HUGE FACE. Lionsand eagles pour out of my mouth. Big whitesquare teeth and a red-purple tongue. There aremagenta clouds around my head and thisis my throne room where Ichange opals into soulsin a spark of alchemy.    Only a fool is impartialto cool mist on the face on a brisk walk through the canyon. – Sometimes passedin semi-darkness by a bikerora car  delivering the papers ...”

“... In the fall of 2002, in the company of a dog named Charlie Chaplin and an architect named Michael Meredith, I set out to drive a 1960 Chevy Apache 10 pick-up truck, at 45 mph, from far west Texas to New York City: 2364 miles through desert, suburbs, forests, lake-spattered plains, mountains, farmland, more suburbs and the Holland Tunnel ...”

“... throat, singing. A thin trickle of demonstrators chant ‘Mexico!’ uphill. Whitewashed against white ants, the yew tree trunks look spindly and phosphorescent, like stalagmites in the cavern of their shade. The birds won’t sing. An old man clutches a fistful of drumsticks and shivers. A month after the election, the posters are still up, each x-ing out ...”

“... by the market, still a fake? What does intention matter if your audience doesn’t care about it? Michael ‘Butcher’ Boone, one of the two narrators of Theft, is a once famous Australian artist, newly divorced and down on his luck. His work is now very unfashionable, and he has retreated to a rustic house in New South Wales owned by his patron. Here, ...”

“... smoke and sights and consommations. The yellow Citröen sits up and fills its lungs, a black and white green-backed mongrel sees us off. The road skirts the airport like a stray runway. Incoming planes make as if to pick us off. Sometimes it divides: one half runs along the ground, the other makes a sudden hump – my fear of flyovers. A little further, I ...”

“... died in 1987. In the movie the performances keep pace with the glitter and the hokum for a while. Michael Douglas as Liberace acts up onstage and off, twinkles with a coy kindness that is all self-admiration but quite fetching even so; Damon is bewildered and wary and captivated in just the right proportions, and his shift from baffled gay guy into trinketed ...”

“... their deliverer, who led them Along the clammy sheughs, then past the oceanic streams And the white rock, the sun’s gatepost in that dreamy region, Until they came to a bog-meadow full of bog-asphodels Where the residents are ghosts or images of the ...”

“... starring your chest. Your beard – the friend of the writer who doesn’t smoke – is shot with white ... A Christmas card arrives to ask why you don’t have any grandchildren. Fine Adjustments By now, it is almost my father’s arm, a man’s arm, that lifts the cigarettes to my mouth numbed by smoke and raw onions and chocolate milk. I need ...”

“... dried-out sacking, cuirasses and boots suggesting feudal Tudors and Japanese samurais, saffron and white robes against glittering sand – open out the harmonics of the story and the national variety of the actors, while Brook makes her bamboo screens, bows and arrows and chariot-wheels into both literal story elements and symbolic emblems of the mastery of ...”

“... on sunshine, sunshine and Baileys.Baileys and discipline. Discipline and habit.Habit and white grapes. Chiefly sunshine.Her correct, quavery German.The enunciating, excruciating visitor.‘We go on living? Very well, we go on ...”

“... was sung to open the games. Only Americans – Dennis Mitchell after winning a 100-metres heat and Michael Johnson after taking the 200-metre gold – puffed out their chests and pulled their jerseys to display the national emblem. Only Americans accused an Irish swimmer of using drugs when she won the Olympic gold. Only an eliminated American boxer, Fernando ...”