Life is absolutely horrific, leading up to absolute horror.

Fate is trying to kill me. I miss my dog. What's a doctor going to say? You're not ill, you're mad as a muffin? They'll either lock me up or tell me to get a grip and no one will believe the truth anyway.

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

She frowned at him. 'You are in love with solitude.' 'Is there a better cure for the world than solitude?

If you have the patience to wait and watch, history will reshape truth (weakest of all forces, and weightless) in the image of opinion. What really happened will cease to matter and, eventually, cease to exist.

Ask any comedian, tennis player, chef. Timing is everything.

A piano might fall on your head, he said, but it also might not. And in the meantime you never know. Something nice might happen.