I'd never chosen to be alone, but that was the way things had turned out, and I'd grown used to it.

The nicest characters in A Week in December research are, in fact, Muslims - and their religious devotion is one of the things that defines them.

Have you ever been lonely? No, neither have I. Solitary, yes. Alone, certainly. But lonely means minding about being on your own. I've never minded about it.

It was entirely silent and I tried to breathe its peace.

This intimacy is not necessary; no one is compelling me to open my inmost self and lay it naked, undefended, against that of another – merely for the joy of the communion.

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

If at the one moment in your life when the chance of something transcendental is offered to you, if you have this chance to move beyond the surface of things, to understand - and you say, No, maybe not... What then? How do you explain the rest of your life to yourself? How do you pass the time until you die? Do you substitute for that an interest in what - eating? Do you spend the next sixty years trying to be fascinated by the act of breathing?