This pain is comfort. It is the solace of physicality, like a touch.

Doing nothing was as honourable as any available course of action. Think of Hamlet, think of Job, think of Jesus before Pilate.

Like all fiction, my lies are just my efforts to be truer than the truth.

The characters act for reasons that they can’t control and, as readers, we have to believe in their motivations, their sense of choice and in the reality of their suffering, even though, deep down, we know it’s all just puppetry on the part of the writer.

I stare out at the real world projected on the windows

His suffering was no more real than he was.

Reality, it seems, is not a flat plane, but has as many veils as an onion has skins.

For someone to be perfect, they must be real, however imperfect they are.

It is a matter of mere coincidence that there is often a real individual who corresponds with a celebrity, signifies them.

You need to bridge the gap between reality and freedom. Drugs are the bridge.

I feel underslept but overjoyed. Nothing feels so good as this.

Is the writer cruel that makes his characters suffer only to bring them to triumph or tragedy in the end?

I know everything must be a lie, but I believe it anyway.

Is it murder to kill a man if the man never existed? To the man it is.

Stories are just lies made to look like truth.

Job understood that he was nothing more than God’s invention and so too was his suffering

Suffering is inevitable. It is part of the human condition. It is written in the human script.

I may not be free, but I’m not about to surrender the illusion of choice.

The future is certain. It is just not known.

An unpublished writer should doubt themselves. They should constantly wonder whether what they’re creating has merit. And then, having doubted, they should take up their pen and see if they can’t make it better.

All life is preoccupied with death. Death is the only certain future. Yet in the face of reason, everyone holds out hope for the highly improbable.

Because he believed in himself, he believed what he did was important. Or maybe it was the other way around.

Publishers are businesses and I don’t blame them for that. If they didn’t make money by publishing books, there wouldn’t be any books.

A good book is not the same as a successful one.

A novel must be judged on its merits, not on how hard the journey was to write it.

Who can say they saw a whole play or read a whole book? Each has their own experience, their own play, their own book

Grief denied will surface in borrowed clothes, the mad, sad clothes of paranoia, fear or loneliness

In the chain of events, it is arbitrary to be sentimental about the passing of any one link.

Time passes. I drift in and out. As if I cease to be, until I remember to exist again.

I’m a bit-part actor in my own life

To reread a book is to read a different book. The reader is different. The meaning is different.

Inhumanity is part of humanity as much as suffering is a part of stories. Cruelty is written in the human script.

He thought of hanging himself, to pass the time.

To be mad is worse than not to be if this is what it is.

I don’t see big subjects as separate from little ones. Yes, you could trudge through life with great human tragedies played out before your eyes without ever taking notice. Or you could see a universe in the smallest thing. The way a person takes their coffee, for example, might say something profound and important about that person, about all humanity, about existence itself.

To be motivated to write a novel, I need to be unable not to write.

Good writing is more about graft and craft than inspiration and aspiration.

He did it because he could not help himself, which explains everything and nothing

The bacteria of resentment bred: distance turned to distrust; distrust turned to bitterness; bitterness to hate, which is, after all, a kind of grievous love

Is cruelty still cruel if it is necessary? Is cruelty still cruel if it is part of a lie?

These are the things you don’t say, even to someone you love.

Silent is an anagram of listen.

The silence was pregnant with noise, with muted fury, with questions the father found too disgusting to frame and with answers to which the son was incapable of giving voice.

The only simple truth is that there is nothing simple in this complex universe. Everything relates. Everything connects

Wouldn’t a no one do as well as a someone about whom nothing can be said?

Being gay is not just what I do, but who I am. It is part of how I choose to live my life even if I never chose.

Even when I press against him his presence is too far away.

Those who perpetrate stories must act cruelly.

Anyone can be a story. Everyone is.

A thrilling story can be dull if told badly, but even the most mundane event can be elevated into a tale of epic scale by a good storyteller.

Nothing is over our heads if we hold them high enough.

As thoroughly as mankind has killed God, the reader has despatched the author.

Adam & Eve have been degraded, reduplicated forever, photocopies of photocopies, mistakes copied, magnified, augmented.

Even Damocles developed a routine.

Rejection is no badge of honour.

I’ve often been criticised, but never critically wounded

He’s a typical existentialist. And that’s a contradiction in terms if ever there was one.

Genes do not make an individual homosexual. They play their part, but so does the rest of the universe.

I guarantee it will change your life, but only because everything does, however small.

So, my sweet, did it put the fun into funeral?

That small difference made all the difference.

Sometimes a butterfly flaps its wings and the weather turns out fine.

To lose one parent might be considered a misfortune, or a reason to deny God’s existence at the least. To lose two looks like He may be up to something.

He showed videotape of himself committing acts of self-violence and informing news crews that he had been assaulted by a marauding mob of irate art historians.

There’s no such thing as probability," she says, slowly, with minimal movement of her jaw. "Things turn out the way they do.

You know, sometimes I even envy myself.

Actors," he says, "should only be superficial on the surface.

So who is cruel? You, cruel reader, you are.