Fashion is fickle, and I was published because I was fashionable. Because I was gay.

I have thought for a long time that the way my clothes hang on me is more important than me inside them.

I was at the tail end of the family. The next brother along was already seven years older than me. I remember growing up by myself, playing games by myself.

All we are is eyes looking for the unbroken or the edges where the broken bits might fit each other.

Words are like untying a corset - you can move into this great space with them.

Outside the leaves on the trees constricted slightly; they were the deep done green of the beginning of autumn. It was a Sunday in September. There would only be four. The clouds were high and the swallows would be here for another month or so before they left for the south before they returned again next summer.

[Property] is a brilliant, chillingly revelatory piece of fiction, a work of craft, economy and such good merciless observation-one of those rare, crucial novels illuminating a history we think we know and understand so that after we've read it we'll never forget its truths.