The writing life is essentially one of solitary confinement - if you can't deal with this, you needn't apply.

I'm going to end up like one of those old weirdos who lives in a network of tunnels burrowed through trash - yet I do not fear this.

Nowadays, my mood ungoverned, I'm free to think the most outrageous things, such as: might it not be a good idea to insist that drug companies give their preparations names that tell the user what they really do?

Certainly, for time out of mind, an obsessive dwelling on happier former days has been synonymous with getting older, while it was the juvenescent who rushed with open arms to embrace the future.

Well, I wanted to be a philosopher, which is the idlest occupation in the world. I wanted to be involved in abstract thought, but because of various problems with the authorities I wasn't able to pull that one off. A lifetime of idleness in academia would have really suited me. So I was thrown out, as it were. Other than that, there seemed no possible idle occupations, so writing . . . although writing isn't exactly idleness. There's an enormous tension between indolence and languor.

When anyone starts out to do something creative - especially if it seems a little unusual - they seek approval, often from those least inclined to give it. But a creative life cannot be sustained by approval, any more than it can be destroyed by criticism - you learn this as you go on.

Drug use and procrastination often go hand in tourniquet.