I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.

Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled but halved. No man is an island

This little piggy went to Hades This little piggy stayed home This little piggy ate raw and steaming human flesh This little piggy violated virgins And this little piggy clambered over a heap of dead bodies to get to the top

We often confuse what we wish for with what is.

The future had suddenly become unknowable: anything could happen: the train of my life had jumped the rails and headed off across the fields and coming down the lane with me, then.

The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

I wondered how I looked to her, in that place, and knew that even in a place that was nothing but knowledge that was the one thing I could not know. That if I look inward I would see only infinite mirrors staring into myself for eternity.