On my fortieth birthday, rather than merely bore my friends by having anything as mundane as a midlife crisis I decided it might be more interesting to actually terrify them by going completely mad and declaring myself to be a magician.

Madness is the emergency exit. You can just step outside, and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened. Forever.

We have laboured long to build a heaven, only to find it populated with horrors.

Everybody has their story to tell.

Once a man has seen society's black underbelly, he can never turn his back on it. Never pretend, like you do, that it doesn't exist.

I am brother to dragons, and companion to owls. My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat.

I think that we need mythology. We need a bedrock of story and legend in order to live our lives coherently.