“There’s a big difference, I discovered, between wanting to die and not wanting to live. When you want to die, you at least have a goal. When you don’t want to live, you’re really just empty.”

“We want different things. Men want to have sex with a woman. Then they want to have sex with another woman. And then another. Then they want to eat cornflakes and sleep for a while, and then they want to have sex with another woman, and another, until they die. Women,’ and I thought I’d better pick my words carefully when describing a gender I didn’t belong to, ‘want a relationship. They may not get it, or they may sleep with a lot of men before they do get it, but ultimately that’s what they want. That’s the goal. Men do not have goals. Natural ones. So they invent them, and put them at either end of a football pitch. And then they invent football. Or they pick fights, or try and get rich, or start wars, or come up with any number of daft bloody things to make up for the fact that they have no real goals.’‘Bollocks,’ said Ronnie.‘That, of course, is the other main difference.”

“If you want to believe in reincarnation, you have to believe that this life, what you're living through right now, is the afterlife. You're missing out on the afterlife you looked forward to in your last existence by worrying about your next life. This is what happens after you die. Take a look.”

“You won’t understand life and death until you’re ready to set aside any hope of understanding life and death and just live your life until you die.”

“Today I don't want to live for, I want to live.”

“10 Steps to Becoming a Better WriterWrite.Write more.Write even more.Write even more than that.Write when you don’t want to.Write when you do.Write when you have something to say.Write when you don’t.Write every day.Keep writing.”

“More and more I find I want to be living in a Big Here and a Long Now.”