The continuous narrative of existence is a lie. There is no continuous narrative, there are lit-up moments, and the rest is dark. When you look closely, the twenty-four hour day is framed into a moment; the still-life of the jerky amphetamine world. That woman-a pieta. Those men, rough angels with an unknown message. The children holding hands, spanning time. And in every still-life, there is a story, the story that tells you everything you need to know.

I fell in love once, if love be that cruelty which takes us straight to the gates of Paradise only to remind us they are closed for ever.

What to say? That the end of love is a haunting. A haunting of dreams. A haunting of silence. Haunted by ghosts it is easy to become a ghost. Life ebbs. The pulse is too faint. Nothing stirs you. Some people approve of this and call it healing. It is not healing. A dead body feels no pain.

We are told not to privilege one story above another. All the stories must be told. Well, maybe that's true, maybe all stories are worth hearing, but not all stories are worth telling.

Creative work is incredibly difficult, and that is where the tests lie. Ordinary professionalism and twenty years' experience can accomplish a lot, but it can't access the hidden places. That still needs what it always needs - a condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything.

Islands are metaphors of the heart, no matter what poet says otherwise.

One day, tens of millions of years from now, someone will find me rusted into the mud of a world they have never seen, and when they crumble me between their fingers, it will be you they find.