It is the useless things that make life worth living and that make life dangerous too: wine, love, art, beauty. Without them life is safe, but not worth bothering with.

You see, when it comes down to it, I sometimes believe that words are all I have. I am not actually sure that I am capable of thought, let alone feeling, except through language.

It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing - they are not all bad. Those devils have also been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.

There is great stupidity in this reaction, or at least minimal imagination, which is more or less the same thing, but morally worse.

We keep our insignificant blemishes so that we can blame them for our larger defects.

'Would you rather be hunted by hounds, gassed, trapped, poisoned or shot, old darling?' 'Well, since you mention it, I'd rather be left alone.' 'Ng ... but given that that isn't an option?' 'No? Thought not. It never is, is it?'

I suppose this was the first time I had ever felt an urge not to be. Never an urge to die, far less an urge to put an end to myself - simply an urge not to be. This disgusting, hostile and unlovely world was not made for me, nor I for it. It was alien to me and I to it.

Nothing prayed for - it is life's strictest and least graceful rule - comes to you at the time of praying. Good things always come too late.

I used many times to touch my own chest and feel, under its asthmatic quiver, the engine of the heart and lungs and blood and feel amazed at what I sensed was the enormity of the power I possessed. Not magical power, but real power. The power simply to go on, the power to endure, that is power enough, but I felt I had also the power to create, to add, to delight, to amaze and to transform.

The spectator sees more of the game.