These days everyone was insisting on their identity, coming out as a man, woman, gay, black, Jew - brandishing whichever features they could claim, as if without a tag they wouldn’t be human.

Without love, most of life remains concealed. Nothing is as fascinating as love, unfortunately.

I don't want to be loved. I want to be desired. Love is safety, but desire is foul.

Children, who have yet to learn our ways, are notoriously promiscuous in their affection. They’ll sit on anyone’s knee.

My pleasures disappeared with my vices.

I guess writing is a kind of therapy in the sense that there are things you need to say and you say them, and better out than in.

For Mum, life was fundamentally hell. You went blind, you got raped, people forgot your birthday, Nixon got elected, your husband fled with a blonde from Beckenham, and then you got old, you couldn't walk and you died.