He wrote one more paragraph for his own sake, to see what he had to say.

All my life I had lived on the presumption that there was no existence beyond... flesh, the moment of being alive... then nothing. I had searched in superstition... But there was nothing. Then I heard the sound of my own life leaving me. It was so... tender. I regretted that I had paid it no attention. Then I believed in the wisdom of what other men had found before me... I saw that those simple things might be true... I never wanted to believe in them because it was better to fight my own battle. You can believe in something without compromising the burden of your own existence.

Shakespeare drew a map of the human mind as clearly as Newton mapped the heavens. Wht is one considered science and the other fir only to be mocked with jokes about pretty girls and drury lane?

Knowing one was comprised of recycled matter only and that selfhood was a delusion did not take away the aching of the heart.

Gradually the feeling wears off, and I feel swamped again by the inexplicable pettiness of being alive.

The best thing is the combined effect of nicotine with alcohol, greater than the sum of the two parts.

I have written millions of words about contemporary England - in journalism. Why don't I take it as the background for a novel? I may do one day. But the simple answer is that it does not excite the novelistic part of my brain; it does not fire it up.