Literature is humanity's broad-minded alter-ego, with room in its heart for monsters, even for you. It's humanity without the judgement.

Nicotine and alcohol embraced in my system like long-parted siblings, grateful to me for reuniting them.

You love life because life's all there is.

Pain revealed the paltry dimensions of love. The paltry dimensions of everything, in fact, except pain.

Once you've stopped loving someone breaking his or her heart's just an unpleasant chore you have to get behind you. My God, you really don't love me anymore, do you? No matter your decency the victim's incredulity's potentially hilarious. You manage not to laugh.

The first horror is there's horror. The second is you accommodate it.

If Im going to invest the time in a novel, I want something more than the entertainment you get out of most genre fiction.