It is madness. And if you don't know who you are, or if your real self has drifted away from you with the undertow, madness at least gives you an identity. It's the same with self-loathing. You're probably just normal and normal-looking but that's not a real identity, not the way ugliness is. Normality, just accepting that you're probably normal-looking, lacks the force field of self-disgust. If you don't know who you are, madness gives you something to believe in.

I envied women with signature hair-dos, signature perfumes, signature sign-offs. Novelists who tell Vogue Magazine: “I can’t live without my Smythson notebook, Pomegranate Noir cologne by Jo Malone and Frette sheets”. In the grip of madness, materialism begins to look like an admirable belief system.

I would say at the moment the only person who could have played me this past year would have to be Angelina Jolie.

It's all in her walk, a cartoon swagger. Part Jayne Mansfield, part Muhammad Ali. Men never know if it's an invitation upstairs or an invitation outside.

I think that's the function of a lot of psychiatrists and therapists, is keeping people afloat just long enough for them to get older.

Are you mine?” Yes. “Are you mine?” Yes. “Are you mine?” No. “No?” No. I loved being yours. But now I’m mine, which is all I ever was, in the end.

If killing yourself is not an option anymore, you have to sink into the darkness instead, and make something out of it.