"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
