I still get awful depression. It's who I am.

I rang my mother to thank her for giving birth to me and she said, "What choice had I? You were in there, how else were you going to get out?

I sighed. "What is life but fleeting moments of happiness strung together on necklace of despair?

I couldn’t be with people and I didn’t want to be alone. Suddenly my perspective whooshed and I was far out in space, watching the world. I could see millions and millions of people, all slotted into their lives; then I could see me—I’d lost my place in the universe. It had closed up and there was nowhere for me to be. I was more lost than I had known it was possible for any human being to be.

It was only when the salt water of my tears ran into my cuts and made them sting that I discovered I was crying.

Minsk! How pissed-off that sounded! It was great. You could scare the bejayzus out of someone if you said it right.

... 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.