I have stolen more quotes and thoughts and purely elegant little starbursts of writing from the Book of Revelation than anything else in the English language - and it is not because I am a biblical scholar, or because of any religious faith, but because I love the wild power of the language and the purity of the madness that governs it and makes it music.

There is not much mental distance between a feeling of having been screwed and the ethic of total retaliation, or at least the kind of random revenge that comes with outraging the public decency.

And in fact the only way I can deal with this eerie situation at all is to make a conscious decision that I have already lived and finished the life I planned to live - and everything from now on will be A New Life, a different thing, a gig that ends tonight and starts tomorrow morning.

Anything that gets your blood racing is probably worth doing.

Anything worth doing is worth doing well.

I learned a long time ago that reality was much weirder than anyone's imagination.

I keep my mouth shut now. I've turned into a professional coward.