I thought of the things that had happened to me over the years, and of how little I had made happen.

And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time’s malleability.

History is the lies of the victors.

Poets seem to write more easily about love than prose writers. For a start, they own that flexible ‘I’…. Then again, poets seem able to turn bad love – selfish, shitty love – into good love poetry. Prose writers lack this power of admirable, dishonest transformation. We can only turn bad love into prose about bad love. So we are envious (and slightly distrustful) when poets talk to us of love.

Mystification is simple; clarity is the hardest thing of all.

I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded - and how pitiful that was.

Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't.