"Hah, perhaps it is unique in his works. Or does every story have to come from the same place? A dancer may hear music from an orchestra or the sky, or create it in their own mind, and still be the same dancer. --He did write it in exile; no doubt Guernsey is quieter than Paris."

Milliways is quieter, too; this is a conversation that should have more voices in the back of it, interrupting and agreeing and going off their own way. It could be a melancholy thought, but at the moment it just makes Bahorel laugh. "--Imagine telling everyone back in Paris about this! Telling Hugo alone that he'd end up writing a book where an insurrection against his Louis-Philippe isn't villainous-- oh, yes, we're set off quite well! Hm."

He changes position in accordance with a new thought, sprawling over the couch and letting his head hang off the edge by Jehan's shoulder; a very serious attitude for serious matters. "For the ideas that do come through that way, do you think they need to find sympathy in the writer first? Or is it like being struck by lightning, or those poor doomed prophets forever getting haunted by talking bushes and devouring whales, and the truth comes for its listener , wanted or not?"