I guess writing is a kind of therapy in the sense that there are things you need to say and you say them, and better out than in.

Being in love means being at the mercy of someone's childhood.

If you want something badly enough, you make arrangements. If you don't want it badly enough, you make excuses.

And silence, like darkness, can be kind; it, too, is a language.

You can't spend your life beating yourself up for something that happened yesterday. You die if you don't follow your desire.

England has become a squalid, uncomfortable, ugly place ... an intolerant, racist, homophobic, narrow-minded, authoritarian, rat-hole run by vicious, suburban-minded, materialistic philistines.

Without love, most of life remains concealed. Nothing is as fascinating as love, unfortunately.

I don't want to be loved. I want to be desired. Love is safety, but desire is foul.

Our lives can only be lived forward and understood backwards. Living a life and understanding it occupy different dimensions.

The vocation of each writer is to describe the world as he or she sees it; anything more than that is advertising.

How disturbing it is that our illusions are often our most important beliefs.

It is unwise to waste in thought what could be earned and secured in action.

We have all at one time been stranded on islands shouting lies across the seas of misunderstanding, hoping the fog will carry our mischief to the distant ports in people’s minds.

Sniff looked at them and noticed that they were much smaller than he was, so he felt kinder and said, condescendingly. "Hullo. Nice to see you.

Growing up, I was in and out of trouble in group homes and other institutions, and when I was 14, I was locked up in a psychiatric hospital for a number of months for behavioral problems.

The newest books are those that never grow old.

It seemed to him a very Edinburgh thing. Welcoming, but not very.

... in the movies Paris is designed as a backdrop for only three things--love, fashion shows, and revolution.

At school I got harassed so badly for being too tall, too thin, too pale - too everything that has gotten me where I am now, which is quite ironic.

Greatness is a spiritual condition.

In the Mass the blood of Christ flows anew for sinners.