When I look at my life I realise that the mistakes I have made, the things I really regret, were not errors of judgement but failures of feeling.

I had relationships with men as well as women. I wasn't choosing; I didn't think I had to.

It's hard to remember that this day will never come again. That the time is now and the place is here and that there are no second chances at a single moment.

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.

We bury things so deep we no longer remember there was anything to bury. Our bodies remember. Our neurotic states remember. But we don't.

Not much touches us, but we long to be touched. We lie awake at night willing the darkness to part and show us a vision.

Academics love to make theories about a body of work, but each book consumes the writer and is the sum of his or her world.