I never for a moment considered killing myself, because it wouldn't have achieved anything.

From an early age she had developed the art of being alone and generally preferred her own company to anyone else’s. She read books at enormous speed and judged them entirely on her ability to remove her from her material surroundings. In almost all the unhappiest days of her life she had been able to escape from her own inner world by living temporarily in someone else’s, and on the two or three occasions that she had been too upset to concentrate she had been desolate.

Life can be lived at a remove. You trade in futures, and then you trade in derivatives of futures. Banks make more money trading derivatives than they do trading actual commodities.

My direction? Anywhere. Because one is always nearer by not keeping still.

Something had been buried that was not yet dead.

We're deaf men working as musicians; we play the music but we can't hear it.

The past was suddenly rushing in on me in a way I found hard to fight.