“This, of course, is the crux. It doesn't really matter what the language is, only whether there's a transcendent moral grammar underpinning it. No one really cares what hell's called or who runs it. They just don't want to go there.”

“He'd seen her not really recognising him, not really, when it came down to it, caring who he was. It was disgusting, that pain could do that. What was the point of it, except to shame and disgust everyone? To make a mockery of love? If that was God then fuck God, whether there was a reason for it or not. If there was a reason then fuck the reason. No kind of reason he was interested in any more.”

“I'm supposed to be guilty of all sorts of crimes and misdemeanors, but when you get right down to it, I'm really only guilty of one: wondering. The road to Hell, you say, is paved with good intentions. Charming. But actually it's paved with intriguing questions. You want to know. Man do you want to know.”

“Once you've stopped loving someone breaking his or her heart's just an unpleasant chore you have to get behind you. My God, you really don't love me anymore, do you? No matter your decency the victim's incredulity's potentially hilarious. You manage not to laugh.”

“All the metaphors in this world wouldn’t scratch the surface of what stepping into darkness is like for me. And that’s just darkness. Don’t get me started on light. Really, don’t get me started on light.”

“I know what the majority of you think about all this. All this sex and money and drugs. You think: people who live like that never end up happy. You need to think that in just the way men with small penises need to think size doesn't matter. It's understandable. The rich, the famous, the big-dicked, the slim-and-gorgeous - they can incite an envy so urgent that you can escape it only by translating it into pity. People who live like that never end up happy. Yes, you're right. But neither do you. And in the meantime, they've had all the sex and drugs and money.”

“How to describe hell? Disembowelled landscape busy with suffering, incessant heat, permanent scarlet twilight, a swirling snowfall of ash, the stink of pain and the din of...if only, hell is two things: the absence of God and the presence of time. Infinite variations on that theme. Doesn't sound so bad, does it? Well, trust me.”