"A man in his forties is walking along the embankment of the river Thames. He has recently abandoned his marriage and has thus imperilled his care and responsibility for his son whom he loves. He now does not know if he is experiencing freedom, or a condition of being irrevocably lost. Or are these the same? His brain, or so he has read, is a contorted maze of surfaces (he must look this up). But then what was the reality of the so called outside world? One so seldom saw or touched anything except a surface—that of the glittering river, for instance, which was like a looking glass, or like love. Unless one jumped in and drowned, that is. But then, might not life and death seem the same? Especially if one were a poet or a painter. Which he was. Both, I mean."

—Nicholas Mosley