The cat dropped the rat between its two front paws. "There are those," it said with a sigh, in tones as smooth as oiled silk, "who have suggested that the tendency of a cat to play with its prey is a merciful one - after all, it permits the occasional funny little running snack to escape, from time to time. How often does your dinner get to escape?

Life - and I don't suppose I'm the first to make this comparison - is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.

Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.

If you can't eat it, drink it, smoke it, or snort it... then f*ck it!

I'm willing to make a fool out of myself in public. I'm also willing to make those mistakes that you're going to make the first time you go out, so hopefully the next time it will be better.

When you're starting off as a young writer, you look at all the stuff that's gone before and the stuff that's influenced you, and you reach the ladle of your imagination into this bubbling stew pot of all of this stuff, and you pour it out. And that's where you start from.

For love is no part of the dreamworld. Love belongs to Desire, and Desire is always cruel.