Small Demons

For 30 years, ten months, and four days, she was the light of my life, my whole ambition. Anything else I did was just the fire for her to warm her hands at.

Raymond Chandler on Cissy Pascal, quoted in “Burning Witches” by Michael Rogin, London Review of Books (Sept 1997). One of my lost habits from grad school is faithfully reading the LRB. This is from Michaelmas 1997, St Antony’s Common Room.