Human beings need to watch out for reasonless niceness too. It's never reasonless and its reason's not usually nice.

Mother used to say escape is never further than the nearest book.

Anticipating the end of the world is humanity's oldest passtime

I can't bear living in this huge beautiful world and not try to imitate it as best I can.

A life can get knocked into a new orbit by a car crash, a lottery win or just a bleary-eyed consultant giving bad news in a calm voice.

Dreams are all I have ever truly owned.

Strip back the beliefs pasted on by governesses, schools, and states, you find indelible truths at one's core. Rome'll decline and fall again, Cortés'll lay Tenochtitlán to waste again, and later, Ewing will sail again, Adrian'll be blown to pieces again, you and I'll sleep under the Corsican stars again, I'll come to Bruges again, fall in and out of love with Eva again, you'll read this letter again, the sun'll grow cold again. Nietzsche's gramophone record. When it ends, the Old One plays it again, for an eternity of eternities.