"...lack of protection."

"He lacked the sort of protective carapace that other people have, but one has to add that his achievement wouldn't have been possible if he'd had that carapace. So that the lack of a carapace was intimately related - was the same thing, almost - as his talent and his vision and his originality. It's as though in the remorseless tide of life, as he saw it, there are moments of respite, when some small hope can be constructed, some exchange can take place and the poignancy of this also comes from this lack of protection."

John Berger on B S Johnson, from Like A Fiery Elephant, The Story of B S Johnson by Jonathan Coe, p.415

"... a splintery self ..."

Million a tesserae was shattered he
no possible,no with together putting
back . Front,sides,of splinters a spintery
self,remainder of a,a window shutting -
glass that so fell smashed and out look ! fuck damn
on stones the there lay if as malevolent
bare feet for unnoticing - with a slam
eh ? what ? a pieces in man,in a meant
fragments,heart,rags skin instead of a .
Overcasing the state ? was he ? know,you -
mosaic means bits. So do tesserae
before done the work, to make them,what ? do
things together ? Is a ? make do ? to whole
(denied a man in love fragments his soul) .

Ali Smith, The Accidental, p169