As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.

He weeps for the men snatched away to his left and right, when death had no appetite for him.

It was as though we were speaking in different languages. If the Dalai Lama were on his deathbed and the jazz musician Eric Dolph were to try to explain to him the importance of choosing one's engine oil in accordance with changes in the sound of the bass clarinet, that exchange might have been more worthwhile and effective than my conversations with Noboru Wataya.

I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen, of medow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been;

Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were, with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be when winter come without a spring that I shall ever see.

For still there are so many things that I have never seen: in every wood in every spring there is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago, and people who will see a world that I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think of times there were before, I listen for returning feet and voices at the door.

A German produces on average twice the faeces of a Frenchman. Hyperactivity of the bowel at the expense of the brain, which demonstrates their physiological inferiority. During times of barbarian invasion, the Germanic hordes strewed their route with great masses of faecal material. Even in recent centuries, French travellers knew immediately when they had crossed the Alsace frontier by the abnormal size of the turds left lying along the roads.

[...]You leave the phone on beside you as you fall asleep. I sit in my bed and listen to your breathing, until I know you are safe, until I know you no longer need me for the night.

[...]These are our lives. You went and broke our lives. You are so much worse than a cheater. You killed something. And you killed it when its back was turned.

gravity, n.

I imagine you saved my life. And then I wonder if I'm just imagining it.

breathtaking, adj.

Those mornings when we kiss and surrender for an hour before we say a single word.

blemish, n.

The slight acne scars. The penny-sized, penny-shaped birtmark right above your knee. The dot below you shoulder that must have been from when you had chicken pox in third grade. The scratch on your neck - did I do that? This brief transcript of moments, written on the body, is so deeply satisfying to read.

abstraction, n.

Love is one kind of abstraction. And then there are those nights when I sleep alone, when I curl into a pillow that isn't you, when I hear the tiptoe sounds that aren't yours. It's not as if I can conjure you there completely. I must embrace the idea of you instead.

Snowflakes and naked babies tumbled through her nights. She dreamed she was in the midst of a snowstorm. Snow fell and gusted around her. She held out her hands and snowflakes landed on her open palms. As they touched her skin, they melted into tiny, naked newborns, each wet baby no bigger than a fingernail. Then wind swept them away, once again just snowflakes among a flurry of thousands.

The woman breathes out. The man breathes in.

The moment you possess a woman, you become monsters.

What I'm saying, what I'm doing, is dictated by the voice from on high, is guided by that voice. And the voice coming out of my throat is a voice buried for thousands of years.

'How strange this all is! I've never felt as close to you as I do right now. We've been married ten years. Ten years! And it's only these last three weeks that I'm finally sharing something with you.' Her hand strokes the man's hair. 'I can touch you... You never let me touch you, never!' She moves towards the man's mouth. 'I have never kissed you.' She kisses him. 'The first time I went to kiss you on the lips, you pushed me away. I wanted it to be like in those Indian films.

This is an utterly enchanting book, and nowhere is the special relationship between man and dog, their mutual devotion and dependency and sheer pride and joy in each other's company, more tellingly illustrated. Here is the dog as fitting companion to poor man or princess. A lovely, lovely book.

Jilly Cooper

"I hope I'm not getting in your way," she said.

"I don't have any way for you to get in," I said.

"I really like you, Midori. A lot."

"How much is a lot?"

"Like a spring bear," I said.

A spring bear?" Midori looked up again. "What's that all about? A spring bear."

"You're walking through a field all by yourself one day in spring, and this sweet little bear cub with velvet fur and shiny little eyes comes walking along. And he says to you, "Hi, there, little lady. Want to tumble with me?" So you and the bear cub spend the whole day in each other's arms, tumbling down this clover-covered hill. Nice, huh?"

"Yeah. Really nice."

"That's how much I like you."

Some people get a kick out of reading railway timetables and that's all they do all day. Some people make huge model boats out of matchsticks. So what's wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?