Andrew Miller

“Art, I subsequently realised, is like that. It softens by association and implication. It renders the hard pliable. It creates gaps, gaping holes really, in possibility.”

“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?”

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

“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.”

“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.”