“I mean, if I went 'round saying I was an emperor, just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!”

“I feel that I have had a blow; but it is not, as I thought as a child, simply a blow from an enemy hidden behind the cotton wool of daily life; it is or will become a revelation of some order; it is a token of some real thing behind appearances; and I make it real by putting it into words. It is only by putting it into words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost its power to hurt me; it gives me, perhaps because by doing so I take away the pain, a great delight to put the severed parts together.”

“I may be nervous," I say."Okay, I'm really glad you said that, because I just went to the back room to put on more deodorant." Sebastian says.”

“There was a great joke that was forever doing the rounds in the jail and it was probably funny not because it had a humorous punchline but because it was so very true at a deep psychological level. Put anyone in that jail and soon enough they'd actually become a cruel, twisted, sadistic and heartless thug. And some of the prisoners were just as bad.”

“For a moment I hoped I was in heaven--or wherever it is my kind go when death calls...Instead I opened my eyes and discovered that I was in hospital. The flimsy little gown they'd put me in had tiny pink piggies on it. My first thought was that I had to have been in bad shape to be admitted. My second, I'm ashamed to admit, was whether or not they'd let me take the nightie home with me.”

“It was the first smile of my life. Of course, that is a ridiculous thing to say; I had been smiled at often, the big man had smiled at me not a minute since. And yet I say: it was the first smile, because it was the first that ever went straight into me like a needle too thin to be seen.”