What is a writer of fiction but a liar with a licence?
So much of his life seemed to be like this now, a blur of days without anything to define them from each other, like episodes of a soap he watched out of habit, even though none of the characters interested him.
Magical properties were attributed to it. Its brew was sipped on the steps of sacrificial temples; its ecstasies were fierce and terrible. Is this what he fears? Corruption by pleasure, the subtle transubstantiation of the flesh into a vessel for debauch?
He was the cleanest-cut comic-book schoolboy hero imaginable.
There’s good news and slightly less good news.
There was something about total loyalty, uncritical devotion, endless patience, perpetual forgiveness and the general inability to believe that a loved one could ever do anything wrong that, frankly, just gave him the creeps.
There’s an old Northlands saying that goes like this: When lies don’t help. try telling the truth. Loki knew it well, of course, but preferred his own version, which was: When lies don’t help, tell better lies.
We’re gods, not saints. Everyone lies. Everyone cheats. Everyone scores off everyone else.
For a moment something almost as rare as the sight that they had just witnessed occurred: Loki was totally lost for words.
Sometimes walking away is best. I should know. It’s my specialty.
Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.
She always had that about her, that look of otherness, of eyes that see things much too far, and of thoughts that wander off the edge of the world.
I let it go. It’s like swimming against the current. It exhausts you. After a while, whoever you are, you just have to let go, and the river brings you home.
I’ve never been very good at leaving things behind. I tried, but I have always left fragments of myself there too, like seeds awaiting their chance to grow.
I sell dreams, small comforts, sweet harmless temptations to bring down a multitude of saints crashing among the hazels and nougatines.
I could do with a bit more excess. From now on I’m going to be immoderate – and volatile – I shall enjoy loud music and lurid poetry. I shall be rampant.