There are lives lived for love, and lives lived for art. We, happy band, have chosen the later persuasion.

Often people who are wonderful with animals aren't always terribly good with human beings.

I have the normal complement of anxieties, neuroses, psychoses and whatever else - but I'm absolutely nothing special.

Everything is in flux: everything changes; the body changes, the soul changes. We are capable of extraordinary self-transmutat ion and internal self-transforma tion.

Mutilation is the badge that can never be taken off, and sets us apart from all others. Pain is important to the bonding-a physical horror that bonds us ever tighter to all those who have partaken. The intensity of the experience helps to widen the gulf between us and those who have not shared.

I know that I want to bring sex and horror together as I have been able to in my books.

We each die countless little deaths on our way to the last. We die out of shame as humiliation. We perish from despair. And, of course, we die for love.