Self-knowledge is essential not only to writing, but to doing almost anything really well. It allows you to work through from a deep place - from the deep, dark corners of your subconscious mind.

This was what happiness felt like - this wondrous, miraculous alternative to dread.

It's not that he lacked poetry. But his poetry was of the body, not the mind. He spoke it in the way he moved, the way he held a hammer, rowed a boat, built a fire. I, on the other hand, was like a brain in a box, a beating heart in a coal scuttle.

I didn't seem to have that effect on anyone but it would have been a waste for both of us to be saints.

Now let's try to understand that falling into sexual and emotional thrall with an underage blood relative hadn't exactly been on my list of Things to Do while visiting England,but I was coming around to the belief that whether you liked it or not, Things Happen and once they start happening you pretty much just have to hold on for dear life and see where they drop you when they stop.

I felt a momentary urge to leap into the sea and swim free of the present.

I, a late riser, fantasise about getting up every morning at 5 A.M. to fetch the horses in from the fields.