For feel-good fiction to work, there has to be an element of darkness.

I loved being in my own head so much, it was getting harder and harder being with other people.

I know of people who don't believe it, but depression is an illness, but unlike, say, a broken leg, you don't know when it'll get better.

How to make God laugh? Tell Him your plans.

I've kind of realized life is meant to be tough and everybody is in psychic and spiritual discomfort of some sort and has a burden to carry. I've realized I'm not special.

... I am more of an ambler. I once overheard my old boss in Dublin describe me as very "hello trees, hello flowers." It was intended as an insult and it fulfilled its brief; I was insulted. I had little interest in greeting trees and flowers but nor did I treat life as a treadmill, on which it was vital to keep fleeing forward in order to avoid being sucked off the back and out of the game.

For feel-good fiction to work, there has to be an element of darkness.