What art should be about,' they will say, 'is revealing exquisite and resonant truths about the human condition.' Well, to be honest - no, it shouldn’t. I mean, it can occasionally, if it wants to; but really, how many penetrating insights to human nature do you need in one lifetime? Two? Three? Once you’ve realised that no one else has a clue what they’re doing, either, and that love can be totally pointless, any further insights into human nature just start getting depressing really.

A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival.

Life divides into amazing enjoyable times and appalling experiences that will make future amazing anecdotes.

I always give three pieces of advice to all the teenage girls when I do my talks: long country walks - it's important to get some fresh air in your lungs, and be in contact with your body; masturbation - it takes the edge off, it'll get you through; and the revolution - believing in changing the world.

Nowadays, to be frank, every week is a good week for freakshow television. we might start asking, Why are there so many freaks? And why do they all want to be on television?

When a woman says, ‘I have nothing to wear!’, what she really means is, ‘There’s nothing here for who I’m supposed to be today.

I cannot understand antiabortion arguments that center on the sanctity of life. As a species, we’ve fairly comprehensively demonstrated that we don’t believe in the sanctity of life. The shrugging acceptance of war, famine, epidemic, pain, and lifelong, grinding poverty show us that, whatever we tell ourselves, we’ve made only the most feeble of efforts to really treat human life as sacred.