The work that lasts over time is the work which still speaks to us when all contemporary interest in that work is extinct.

Part fact part fiction is what life is. And it is always a cover story. I wrote my way out.

Yes, the past is another country, but one that we can visit, and once there we can bring back the things we need.

Know thyself,’ said Socrates. Know thyself,’ said Sappho, ‘and make sure that the Church never finds out.

I want to be an art-hero - I want to change the form of the novel.

I didn't know what hate felt like, not the hate that comes after love. It's huge and desperate and it longs to be proved wrong. And every day it's proved right it grows a little more monstrous. If the love was passion, the hate will be obsession. A need to see the once-loved weak and cowed beneath pity. Disgust is close and dignity is far away. The hate is not only for the once loved, it's for yourself too; how could you ever have loved this?

We heal up through being loved, and through loving others. We don't heal by forming a secret society of one - by assessing about the only other 'one' we might admit, and being doomed to disappointment.