“It was as if the story had been added to, so as not to disgust people too much.”

“He had never been a social man. He had shunned causes with contempt and disgust. They were for pig-simple suckers and people with too much time and money on their hands”

“He had been through so much, and had grown so discouraged, so sad, so disgusted with himself, that he could understand... It was the worst thing in the world to lose faith with oneself.”

“So I found myself telling my own stories. It was strange: as I did it I realised how much we get shaped by our stories. It's like the stories of our lives make us the people we are. If someone had no stories, they wouldn't be human, wouldn't exist. And if my stories had been different I wouldn't be the person I am.”

“Every life is a story. Every story has mistakes. If you focus too much on the mistakes, you will miss the story. In doing that, you are making a dreadful mistake yourself. Sometimes, it is the mistakes that enrich and give the story so much more meaning than it would have had otherwise.”

“Had my life increased, or merely added to itself? There had been addition and subtraction in my life, but how much multiplication?”