These are for my Cambridge writers who are joining me later today. They’re for you too – if you find something helpful here. Happy writing:

I can still smell the smoke from the house burning in my brain

Dorianne Laux: Finger exercises for poets

The dog looked as if it was about to cry, too

Orhan Pamuk: The Museum of Innocence (trans Maureen Freely)

The nightmares. Some kept coming back like that one about the flowers. Enormous blossoms of all colors, opening and closing their petal-portals, come in, come in!

Lygia Fagundes Telles: The Girl in the Photograph (trans Margaret A Neves)

You may collect all the iroko seeds in the world, open the soil and put them there. It will all be in vain. The great tree chooses where to grow and we find it there; so it is with greatness in men.

Chinua Achebe: No Longer at Ease

I have frequently observed this curious aspect of power: that it is often when one is physically closest to its source that one is least well informed as to what is actually going on.

Robert Harris: Imperium (told by Tiro, Cicero’s confidential secretary for 36 years)