“[f]or most people, construction is tight, concentrated, bunchy, whereas vandalism offers release; you have to be quite an artist to give positive expression to abandon.”

“Sometimes it was hard to express how much you loved someone. You said the words, but you could never quite capture the depth of it. You could never quite hold someone tightly enough.”

“When you actually meet the devil and he offers you a deal most artists eventually negotiate.”

“People forget they have options. And they forget that those things don't really matter. They should concentrate on what they have and not what they don't have. And by the way, wishing and dreaming doesn't mean concentrating on what you don't have, it's positive thinking that encourages hoping and believing, not whinging and moaning.”

“a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places and not quite so loose in others.”

“Undressing her was an act of recklessness, a kind of vandalism, like releasing a zoo full of animals, or blowing up a dam.”