I think to be writer you have to enjoy being alone. I was a loner as a teenager and was always drawn to characters in books and films who were at the fringes.

I just know that right now, we want to be proud. For once. We want to take the struggle and rise above it. We want to frame it, live it, survive it. We want to put it in our mouths and taste it and never forget it, because it makes us strong.

It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on, coughing and searching, and finding.

I wanted to drown inside a woman in the feeling and drooling of the love I could give her. I wanted her pulse to crush me with its intensity. That's what I wanted. That's what I wanted myself to be.

There are moments when you can only stand and stare, watching the world forget you as you remove yourself from it - when you overcome it and cease to exist as the person you were.

And they would all smile at the beauty of destruction.

When she came to write her story, she would wonder when the books and the words started to mean not just something, but everything.