Birchwood (1973; Minerva Edn. 1992): ‘I am therefore I think. That seems inescapable. In this lawless house I spend the nights poring over my memories, fingering them, like an impotent casanova his old love letters, sniffing the dusty scent of violets. Some of these memories are in a language which I do not understand, the ones that could be headed, the beginning of the old life. They tell the story which I intend to copy here, all of it, if not its meaning, the story of the fall and rise of Birchwood, and of the part Sabatier and I played in the last battle.’ ( p.11).

Further ...

‘No, I knew this girl was someone else, a lost child, misplaced in time, and when I returned the picture had inexplicable altered, and would not fit into the new scheme of things and I destroyed it.’ (Picador Edn., p.13.)

‘Outside my memories, this silence and harmony, this brilliance I find again in that second silent world which exists, independent, ordered by unknown laws, in the depths of mirrors. This is how I remember such scenes. If I provide something otherwise, be assured I am inventing.’ (Panther Books, rep. Edn. 1984, p.21.)

‘How many have I lost along the way? I began to write as a means of finding them again, and thought that at last I had discovered a form which could contain and order all my losses. I was wrong. There is no form, no order, only echoes an coincidences, sleights of hand, dark laughter. I accept it.’ (p.175.)

‘I find the world always odd, but odder still, I suppose, is the fact that I find it so, for what are the eternal verities by which I measure these temporal aberrations? Intimations abound, but they are felt only, and words fail to transfix them. Anyway, some secrets are not to be disclosed under pain of who knows what retribution, and whereof I cannot speak, thereof I must be silent.’ (Ibid., p.174)

—Birchwood [1973] (London: Panther Books; rep. edn. 1984), p.21.