“In the presence of their love I sensed my lonliness, and I understood for a moment, clearly, that deep and basic human desire for companionship at depth.”

“Very quickly I begin to understand the selfishness of my love, the inappropriateness of my relationships, when I realise that every time I fuck it feels as if I am wrestling with demons.”

“Love of my life. Love. Of. My. Life. A retrospectively absurd concept since the most I can say is that he was the love of a particular period of my life, and that it is the random vagaries of life itself, and never love, that define time limits. Meaning, to be in love and wish for its immortality is energy unwisely spent. The idea that we have any choice in the matter is the great illusion.”

“If I could find someone to blame, perhaps I could get angry. Anything would be better than this sadness, this sense of regret for events that were never mine.”

“Love could be fractured and serve different purposes, and that intense love could be divided, between people just as easily as between moments of time.”

“His eyes are huge and black. I think about desire. There are flickerings that occur, and we know very little about them. Millimetres of dilation are words in a language.”

“We are all, I realise, even as I write this, merely moving closer to our deaths. At the end of this sentence I am closer to mine than I was at the beginning. It's relentless. It's a savage thing. And yet for a long time I've carried with me a sense of life opening out. Evidently it's some kind of protective illusion.”