But nowadays I feel guilty that I am granted the immunity of the artistically gifted, having never actually achieved anything to prove myself worthy.

No matter how far I try to travel from people, people always appear. Either they follow me, or they're already there, and I followed them, unwittingly.

In the face of immense tragedy—yet again—unexpected beauty.

How easy to be electrocuted. How fine the line between beauty and peril.

I love that an idea can be so powerful it doesn't matter whether I've seen the artwork for real or not.

Now I wonder if each artwork is in fact utterly inaccessible to everybody but the person to whom it is secretly addressed?

Art, and sadness, which last forever.

Blending into the tinctures and textures of the countryside. The tree which falls without any human hearing still falls, as the creatures who die without being found by a human still die.

I see foxes often, but always they are crossing fallow fields in the distance. Gold flecks on faraway expanses of green. Magnetic to the meandering eye. Enigmatic, unreachable.

I decided that if I didn't allow myself to fall asleep, then I wouldn't have to wake up again and despair.

My mother says: 'People who suffer from anxiety are usually those with the most vivid imaginations.

I believe passionately in preemptive pessimism, especially before a book comes out. I expect the worst both from reviewers and sales, and then, with any luck, I may be proved wrong.

Right is right though all condemn, and wrong is wrong though all approve.

The truth is, no man is white and no man is black. We are all freckled.

It's not nothing when you're abroad and you don't have a washing machine.

Sometimes it looks like I'm dancing, but it's just that I walked into a spider web.

You can touch lives or you can be a quitter.

A real sacrifice involves a radical change in the character of a game which cannot be effected without foresight, fantasy, and the willingness to risk.

Philosophy will tell you what to say, eloquence will tell you how to say it

Nothing about this entire scenario made sense. But who cares? Once in a while, everyone was entitled to be a bit flaky, and now it was his turn.

But everything is relative, Bertie... You, for instance, are my relative, and I am your relative.