A concealed truth, that's all a lie is. Either by omission or commission we never do more than obscure. The truth stays in the undergrowth, waiting to be discovered.

Memory is never pure. And recollection is always coloured by the life lived since.

Slowly, grief tires and sleeps, but never dies. In time it grows used to its prison, and a relationship of respect develops between prisoner and jailer.

I treasure my good reviews; they’re an antidote to the loneliness of writing. The feeling that someone understands what you are trying to do is heartening – though writing is such a compulsion, one would continue anyway. As for terrible reviews, and I have had some horrors, yes, they wound - but not fatally. So far.

Time, for a man who has never truly felt a second of it, it not a great sacrifice.

Why trap what is already trapped? It is only in flight that we know the freedom of the bird.

Tales of ecstasy are endless tales of failure. For always comes separation. And the journey towards the essential, fleeting unity begins again.

I am prepared to accept from others their own version of reality. I think it is a basic freedom really, to create one's own reality from whatever truths are available.

Guilt, guilt, its pious expression alone is in fact today's great absolution. Just say the guilt prayer, "I feel guilty," and hey presto, that's the punishment. The guilt is the punishment. So punished, and therefore cleansed, one can continue with the crime.

We say that life is sweet, its satisfactions deep. All this we say, as we sleepwalk our time through years of days and nights. We let time cascade over us like a waterfall, believing it to be never-ending. Yet each day that touches us, and every man in the world, is unique; irredeemable; over. And just another Monday.

My mother insured that a life of petty facts and dutiful farming was kept at bay by her passionate intensity, which nurtured the essential dreaminess of his nature.

Sometimes we need a map of the past. It helps us to understand the present, and to plan the future.

Though it may arrive with shocking suddenness, horror devours its prey slowly. Through hours of days and years, it spreads its sullen darkness into every corner of the being it has conquered.

Children are the great gamble. From the moment they are born, our helplessness increases. Instead of being ours to mould and shape after our best knowledge and endeavour, they are themselves.

All damaged people are dangerous. Survival makes them so. Why? Because they have no pity. They know that others can survive, as they did.

We learn from tragedy. Slowly.

They say that childhood forms us, that those early influences are the key to everything. Is the peace of the soul so easily won? Simply the inevitable result of a happy childhood. What makes childhood happy? Parental harmony? Good health? Security? Might not a happy childhood be the worst possible preparation for life? Like leading a lamb to the slaughter.

To appear unambitious amongst the ambitious is to invite loathing or fear. To be in the game, but not playing with intent to win, is to be the enemy.

Those who do not have imaginary conversations do not love.

Our sanity depends essentially on a narrowness of vision -- the ability to select the elements vital to survival, while ignoring the great truths.

Lucky people should hide. Pray the days of wrath do not visit their home.

There is an internal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines in our lives. Those who are lucky enough to find it, ease like water over a stone, on to its fluid contours, and are home.