Here's a little tip for you. If you don't like being called a murderer, don't kill people.

Real isn't what they try to tell you. Time isn't. Grown-ups hammer down all these markers, bells, schedules, coffee-breaks, to stake down time so you'll start believing it's something small and mean, something that scrapes flake after flake off of everything you love till there's nothing left; to stake you down so you don't lift off and fly away, somersaulting through whirlpools of months, skimming through eddies of glittering seconds, pouring handfuls of hours over your upturned face.

I can't explain the alchemy that transmuted one evening into the equivalent of years held lightly in common. The only way I can put it is that we recognized, too surely even for surprise, that we shared the same currency.

Most people are only too delighted to wreck each other's heads. And for the tiny minority who do their pathetic best not to, this world is going to go right ahead and make sure they do it anyway.

My father told me once that the most important thing every man should know is what he would die for.

Take what you want and pay for it, says God. You can have anything you want, as long as you accept that there is a price and you will have to pay it.

One of my da's tragedies was always the fact that he was bright enough to understand just how comprehensively he had shat all over his life.