The painting showed a hairless, oppressed creature with a head like an inverted pear, its hands clapped in horror to its ears, its mouth open in a vast, soundless scream. Twisted ripples of the creature's torment, echoes of its cry, flooded out into the air surrounding it; the man or woman, whichever it was, had become contained by its own howl. It had covered its ears against its own sound. The creature stood on a bridge and no one else was present; the creature screamed in isolation. Cut off by - or despite - its outcry.

The will to believe chases out the rational mind, whenever and wherever the two come into conflict.

You know what the doctor said to me to cheer me up?" Fat said. "There are worse diseases than cancer." "Did he show you slides?" We both laughed. When you are nearly crazy with grief, you laugh at what you can.

How much of what we call 'reality' is actually out there or rather within our own head?

He started keeping a journal - had been, in fact, secretly doing so for some time: the furtive act of a deranged person.

For each person there is a sentence—a series of words—which has the power to destroy them.

We should take mothers in high seas and drown them there, they are as poisonous as lead in the air.