Youth

But he cannot see a connection between the end of yearning and the end of poetry. Is that what growing up amounts to: growing out of yearning, of passion, of all intensities of the soul?

What more is required than a kind of stupid, insensitive doggedness, as lover, as writer, together with a readiness to fail and fail again?

Therapy is to make one happy. What is the point of that? Happy people are not interesting. Better to accept the burden of unhappiness and try to turn it into something worthwhile, poetry or music or painting: that is what he been believes.

It gives him an eerie feeling to sit in London reading about streets - Waalstraat, Buitengracht, Buitencingel - along which he alone, of all the people around him with their heads buried in their books, has walked. But even more than by accounts of old Cape Town is he captivated by stories of ventures into the interior, reconnaissances by ox-wagon into the desert of the Great Karoo, where a traveller could trek for days on end without clapping eyes on a living soul. Zwartberg, Leeuwrivier, Dwyka: it is his country, the country of his heart, that he is reading about.

Acabamos pareciéndonos a nuestro yo ideal, dice Baudelaire. Poco a poco la cara que deseamos, la cara de nuestros sueños secretos, arrolla a la cara con la que nacemos

La vida de la mente, piensa para sí: ¿a eso es a lo que nos hemos dedicado, yo y esos otros trotamundos solitarios en las entrañas del British Museum? ¿Nos espera alguna recompensa? ¿Se disipará nuestra soledad, o la vida de la mente es en sí misma una recompensa?

Unos días se siente feliz, incluso privilegiado, por vivir con una mujer bella, o al menos por no vivir solo. Otros días se siente de otro modo. ¿Qué es verdad: la felicidad, la infelicidad o un punto medio entre una y otra?

There is a cold war on the go. America and Russia are competing for the hearts and minds of Indians, Iraquies, Nigerians; scholarships to universities are among the inducements they offer.

If there is ever a word of criticism of America, it is of the most muted kind.