It was as if he grew his hair long and smoked cigarettes because he liked to, not because he liked being seen to. This was dangerously subversive.

I think people talk about one love, but there is the need to love and the need to be loved are not the same thing and I suppose that's... and it's working that out is part of growing up.

All we have to do is listen. The Good Lord gave us two ears and only one mouth, my dear white-headed mother used to say.

I have a dark and dreadful secret. I write poetry... I believe poetry is a primal impulse within all of us. I believe we are all capable of it and furthermore that a small, often ignored corner of us positively yearns to try it.

My father was all brain and little heart.

And of course you are mad, if by a madman we mean a mind that questions and rejects every civilized norm.

The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese. That, in erotic terms, is the Catholic church, in a nutshell.