Art is amoral, whether we accept this or not; it does not take sides. The finest fictions are cold at heart.

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.

Art is amoral, whether we accept this or not; it does not take sides. The finest fictions are cold at heart.

Where I went, no one could follow. Yet someone managed to hold my hand.

How flat all sounds are at the seaside, flat and yet emphatic, like the sound of gunshots heard at a distance.

All my life I have lied. I lied to escape, I lied to be loved, I lied for placement and power; I lied to lie. It was a way of living; lies are life's almost-anagram.

And indeed nothing had happened, a momentous nothing, just another of the great world's shrugs of indifference.