--- > WHEN CARMELLA gave me the present of a hearing trumpet she may have foreseen some of the consequences. Carmella is not what I would call malicious, she just happens to have a curious sense of humour. --- > The fact that I have no teeth and never could wear dentures does not in any way discomfort me, I don’t have to bite anybody and there are all sorts of soft edible foods easy to procure and digestible to the stomach. ... I never eat meat as I think it is wrong to deprive animals of their life when they are so difficult to chew anyway. --- > The maid, Rosina, ... I do not believe that she puts me in a human category so our relationship is not disagreeable. The maguey plant, the flies and myself are things which occupy the back yard, we are elements of the landscape and are accepted as such. ... She talks to the cats, she never talks to her children at all, although I think she likes them in her own way. --- > People think fifty years is a long time to visit any country because it is often more than half a lifetime. To me fifty years is no more than a space of time stuck somewhere I don’t really want to be at all. For the last forty-five years I have been trying to get away. --- > After many complicated gestures she finally put it to my ear and what I had always heard as a thin shriek went through my head like the bellow of an angry bull. “Can you hear me Marian?” Indeed I could, it was terrifying. “Can you hear me Marian?” I nodded speechlessly, this frightful noise was worse than Robert’s motorcycle. “This magnificent trumpet is going to change your life.” Finally I said “For goodness sake don’t shout you make me nervous.” ... “Not only will you be able to sit and listen to beautiful music and intelligent conversation but you will also have the privilege of being able to spy on what your whole family are saying about you, and that ought to be very amusing.” --- > People under seventy and over seven are very unreliable if they are not cats. You can’t be too careful. --- > “Machine guns,” said Carmella, “are simplicity itself. You load them with a lot of bullets and press a trigger. There is no intellectual manipulation necessary and you don’t have to actually hit anything. The noise impresses people, they think you are dangerous if you have a machine gun.” --- > “I thought you said animals were not allowed in institutions. Forty police dogs are surely animals?” “Police dogs are not properly speaking animals. Police dogs are perverted animals with no animal mentality. Policemen are not human beings so how can police dogs be animals?” --- > It’s not that you are dead or anything dramatic like that, it is simply that you are fading away and I can’t even remember your name. I remember your white flannels better than I can remember you. I remember all the things I felt about the white flannels but whoever made them walk about has totally disappeared. --- > Strange how the bible always seems to end up in misery and cataclysm. I often wondered how their angry and vicious God became so popular. Humanity is very strange and I don’t pretend to understand anything, however why worship something that only sends you plagues and massacres? and why was Eve blamed for everything? --- > I decided to pack as if I were going to Lapland. There was a screw driver, hammer, nails, birdseed, a lot of ropes that I had woven myself, some strips of leather, part of an alarm clock, needles and thread, a bag of sugar, matches, coloured beads --- > I decided to pack as if I were going to Lapland. There was a screw driver, hammer, nails, birdseed, a lot of ropes that I had woven myself, some strips of leather, part of an alarm clock, needles and thread, a bag of sugar, matches, coloured beads, sea shells and so on. Finally I put in a few clothes to prevent things rattling about inside the trunk. ---