Sometimes I nursed starfish alive in jam jars of seawater and watched them grow back lost arms. On this day, this awful birthday of otherness, my rival, somebody else, I flung the starfish against a stone. Let it perish.

At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do.

The hardest thing, I think, is to live richly in the present, without letting it be tainted & spoiled out of fear for the future or regret for a badly-managed past.

The sun gives you ulcers, the wind gives you T.B. Once you were beautiful.

I am not a historian, but I find myself being more and more fascinated by history and now I find myself reading more and more about history. I am very interested in Napoleon, at the present: I'm very interested in battles, in wars, in Gallipoli, the First World War and so on, and I think that as I age I am becoming more and more historical. I certainly wasn't at all in my early twenties.

Good to know that if I ever need attention all I have to do is die.

I tried to speak in a cool, calm way, but the zombie rose up in my throat and choked me off.