“We can't all be stars because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as I go by.”

“You may look back on your life and accept it as good or evil. But it is far, far harder to admit that you have been completely unimportant; that in the great sum of things all a man's endless grapplings are no more significant than the scuttlings of a cockroach. The universe is neither friendly nor hostile. It is merely indifferent. This makes me ecstatic. I have reached a nirvana of negativity. I can look futility in the face and still see promise in the stars.”

“But really death seems the least awful thing that can happen to someone”

“I can count all the lovers I've had on one hand...if I'm holding a calculator.”

“Self-pity is the most destructive of all narcotics.”

“The motivation of all artists is 'Look at me, Mum'.”

“I didn't want to tell Mother I worked as a journalist. She thought I was a prostitute. Locking yourself in a room and inventing characters and conversations which do not exit is no way for a grown man to behave.”