I've always thought that anyone who needs to join a herd so badly must be a bit of a sheep himself.

The air seemed poisoned with fear and hatred. People eyed on another suspiciously, and the streets smelled of a silence that knotted your stomach.

We seem to live in a world where forgetting and oblivion are an industry in themselves and very, very few people are remotely interested or aware of their own recent history, much less their neighbors'. I tend to think we are what we remember, what we know. The less we remember, the less we know about ourselves, the less we are. (Interview with Three Monkeys Online, October 2008)

I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.

Julian spoke with the clear, unequivocal lucidity of madmen who have escaped the hypocrisy of having to abide by a reality that makes no sense.

Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget—we will return.

Contrary to what you believe, the earth does not revolve around the desires of your crotch.