“Where do I always find enough courage for one last hope? I am the enemy of this indestructible, pitiless hope which prolongs and intensifies all my pain. I would like to lay hold of hope and strangle it once and for all.”

“Most people walk along the beach hoping to find a fossilized Megalodon shark’s tooth or something. But not me. I walk along hoping to find a fossilized pirate with a fossilized wooden leg, for my collection, which I’ll start once I find the first one.”

“I earnestly hope that all children will spoil this book by painting the illustrations. I wanted to do this myself but the publishers would not let me. But let the colours you lay on be violent, gorgeous, terrific colours, because my feelings are like that.”

“All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.”

“I am One. I value my uniqueness. If there were more like me I would hope they were small and easy to destroy.”

“I hope, in years to come, I shall hold my heart up and it will be a pane of clear glass, through which I see all, but nothing is distorted.”