“It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.”

“If some persons died and others did not die death would indeed be a terrible affliction.”

“And so on, until you arrive at the other side, among the purely abstract self-harming: the grinding over your failures, the refusal to remember anything good, the determination to ensure - if anyone falls into the mistake of making it clear they actually like you - that the next time round they change their opinion pronto. Emotional self-cannibalism, in other words, like those tessellated pictures of a person grappling with a mirror image of himself.”

“And that was the thing about truths and secrets. Sometimes the truth didn't need to be known. The lie was healthier than the truth and, while some secrets could set people free, other secrets could destroy them.”

“Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?”

“All art is abstract, because art is an abstraction of the truth.”