Everything was usual. That was depression: being stuck, clinging to an out-of-date version of oneself.

Surely: the adverb of a man without an argument.

You can only give things up once they start to let you down.

Irony is the hardest addiction of all. Forget heroin. Just try giving up irony, the deep-down need to mean two things at once, to be in two places at once, not to be there for the catastrophe of a fixed meaning.

Detachment is what interests me, seeing how people couldn't have been any other way, how they were the product of forces that they had no control over.

Proust is a hero of mine. I read 'A la recherche' in one go, and I'm a very slow reader. It had an astonishing impact, reading it on my own and being my main company. I think Proust is the most intelligent person to ever have written a novel.

No pain is too small if it hurts, but any pain is too big if it's cherished.