Quotes from 'On the Calculation of Volume I'

. I remembered that I had already been having problems with my mobile on the train to Clairon and before long it had gone completely dead, but I hadn’t needed a phone so it wasn’t something we dwelt on.

But he was probably right in that I had become unreliable. I had lost my sense of judgement. I had not been able to maintain my common sense. This troubled him. He really just wanted to get the evening over with and wake up to a normal world. That was not an option either.

A vacillation between credulity and doubt, an uncertainty which sprang not from unease at the thought of the fault in time I had told them about, but more likely from a growing scepticism, denial, a weighing up of my credibility perhaps.

because he couldn’t make up his mind.

It surprised me that the plant pot had not simply reverted to its activity of the eighteenth, careening back and forth on the cobbles.

We underlined and crossed out. But our investigations bore no fruit. Or rather: they bore plenty of fruit, masses of observations, details which explained nothing and explanations which didn’t quite fit.

Each morning the 79 balance was the same and even though several of our purchases showed up in the account in the evening, the next morning they were gone

I am conscious of my mood today. It fluctuates. I am a little grumpy this morning, I can tell, but that’s probably due to lack of sleep. I look around the room and smile at my mess.

The plastic plant pot I had heard rolling about night after night was still there on the cobbles at the side of the house, but it was hardly moving at all.

. I have woken up in the morning, I have looked out at the rain and the birds in the garden, I have listened to the sounds in the house and in the afternoon, once I could hear the strains of music issuing from the living room, I have gone out