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“After nearly three years on the 'move', being on the run, he feels that unreasonable temper, that jealousy, that self-conceit, that lack of confidence, that stutter, that fear, that hanging back, that hiding one's head in the sand, that bending to society, to impress others when it's not necessary, malaise when he can face them. Difficulties to me, the high pressure, the tension, the nakedness of the world, the empty, emotionless fear we live in. Yes, the harshness of it.”

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Author:Gordon Roddick
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“I am coloured by my father’s Far and painted image. In a thousand lines of broken questions, I have tried to find Some thread, some bind That would peep me through the locked Doors of his life and why I am as I stand. He drank gin with a sense of humour, He was thin and killed by a tumour. In twenty words, his full-fleshed life Is boned for approval, In twenty words, I am lured away And buried in the obscurities Of twenty thousand lives, not so different. Twenty stories told by twenty people Nurture confused and distracted poetry. I am not certain that he was a man And was indeed my father, I am not sure, And yet, I am coloured by my father’s Far and painted image.”

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“The big black face of the clock is all-important - the figures sitting roundly, the heavy hands laboriously moving every minute. Every minute is an hour waiting for the big black thing to say a new minute. One can’t push it or hurry it. Picking it up to smash it is futile – it will still be there, but by hell, when one is happy enjoying oneself, there it is, going faster than hell, menacing you – threatening the end. Always pushing, hurrying, never going slowly or giving you enough time. Time itself, the word I mean, is an ugly, unprepossessing little word with boundless, inconceivable meaning, for time curtails all but extends all into eternity. Man continually races against time, of time, be it seconds or eternity; there is always a quantity of time. Man may well run a mile in three minutes, but he will never run a mile in a minus quantity of time. He can never beat the clock. It ticks relentlessly on, second by second, bringing births and deaths. We are bound by time, shackled forever, yet time is relentless, apathetic and remorseless. It makes no distinction for the individual; for prince or pauper, time will bring each his death, time will make his tea grow cold. Time is night and day, black and white, day after day. Time is God striding hungrily around the world, killing and creating. Time is breaths per minute or sex per hour – time is the oak tree or the tortoise, time is the hawk beady watching fat pigeons – time is what I hate but no longer fight, for no man can destroy it or push it further on or hold it back. It is the strongest thing I know. It is stronger than love or hate, for time can heal them. It is stronger than God, for he cannot change it. Rise. Let us unite against time and be destroyed, for we beat our own brains out.”

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Author:Gordon Roddick
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