there is no reason why anyone should understand how it works… and of course no reason why anyone should care … unless you are curious, in which case I love you, for curiosity about the world and all its corners is a beautiful thing.

It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.

That's alright," said Hugo. "I've got some wine" Which was about all he seemed to have. He poured out two mugfuls. "Very nice," said Adrian, sipping appreciatively. "I wonder how they got the cat to sit on the bottle." "It's cheap, that's the main thing.

Just as it is the love of money that is the root of all evil, it is the belief in shamefulness that is the root of all misery.

I was born Mary Patterson, but then I married and naturally took my husband's name, so now I'm Neil Patterson.

[...] I suppose this was the first time I had ever felt an urge not to be. Never an urge to die, far less an urge to put an end to myself - simply an urge not to be. This disgusting, hostile and unlovely world was not made for me, nor I for it. It was alien to me and I to it.

I like to think of myself at home in the armchair, writing, smoking and occasionally wandering down the shop.