If religion is the opiate of the people, tradition is an even more sinister analgesic, simply because it rarely appears sinister. If religion is a tight band, a throbbing vein, and a needle, tradition is a far homelier concoction: poppy seeds ground into tea; a sweet cocoa drink laced with cocaine; the kind of thing your grandmother might have made.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Oh, I know that. You know me, baby, I cannot be broken. Takes a giant to snap me in half.

Are there other people who, when watching a documentary set in a prison, secretly think, as I have, 'Wish I had all that time to read'?

Then you begin to give up the very idea of belonging. Suddenly this thing, this belonging,it seems like some long, dirty lie ... and I begin to believe that birthplaces are accidents, that everything is an accident. But if you believe that, where do you go? What do you do? What does anything matter?

The ideal reader cannot sleep when holding the writer he was meant to be with.

Don't we all know why nerds do what they do? To get money, which leads to popularity, which leads to girls.