And thank The Infinite Is for Neil and Amanda and Ben and Damian. Hardly a day goes by without one or another of them (it’s usually Neil, but the others do play their parts) having a profound impact on my life.

In affluent houses in America devoid of corporeal want or physical abuse, our problems are small but they’re still problems. We can only be aware of and possibly imagine the problems many other children face around the world but also in our own country in violent homes and inner cities. For pain is very difficult to describe and someone who has only ever suffered a splinter can’t be expected to understand what it’s like to shatter a limb, nor can they be expected to ignore the splinter because, hey–there’s someone out there in the world with a shattered limb and a splinter is so incomparable to their suffering we shouldn’t even bother to remove it.