The problem I've got is that I really, really like drugs. I love everything about them. It is horrific being sober all the time-utterly awful.

Everyone says Oscar Wilde was a dandy, but he wasn't, he was an aesthete. He took pleasure in food and stuff like that. Dandyism is much more austere-much more Calvinistic, more neurotic - it oscillates between narcissism and neurosis.

We build our character as a carapace to keep away the fear of the abyss. That's what our character is for.

The function of music is to release us from the boredom of existence.

I didn't want to tell Mother I worked as a journalist. She thought I was a prostitute. Locking yourself in a room and inventing characters and conversations which do not exit is no way for a grown man to behave.

Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which psychoanalysis is powerless to bestow.

I am half-Byronic, half-moronic; part-shaman, part-showman; half-Nazi, half-Liberace.