When we finished the kiss she said laughing, I can taste your loneliness – it tastes like vinegar. That annoyed me. Everyone knows loneliness tastes like cold potato soup.

Amen’ is like the Send button on an email.

The moment seemed endless, but it was probably only half that.

After all, memory may be the only thing on earth we can truly manipulate to serve us, so we don’t have to look back at ourselves in the receding past and think, What an arsehole!

The past is truly an inoperable tumour that spreads to the present.

I dug out an old brown suitcase and threw a few clothes into it, then looked around my bedroom for memorabilia, but stopped when I remembered that the purpose of memorabilia is to trigger memory....

I think that’s the real loss of innocence: the first time you glimpse the boundaries that will limit your potential.

Regrets came up and asked me if I’d like to own them. Declined them for the most part but took a few just so I wouldn’t leave this relationship empty handed.

There’s nothing wonderful or interesting about unrequited love. I think it’s shitty, just plain shitty. To love someone who doesn’t return your affections might be exciting in books, but in life it’s unbearably boring. I’ll...

It’s always something here – if there isn’t a riot, then someone’s usually trying to escape. The wasted effort helps me see the positives of imprisonment. Unlike those pulling their hair out in good society,...

Sometimes I think the human animal doesn’t really need food or water to survive, only gossip.

…I wondered if it was blasphemous to tell God that rainbows are kitsch.

We just didn’t get it. We were weakened and exhilarated at the same time. A paranoiac’s nightmare! A narcissist’s dream! We didn’t know how to feel: flattered or raped. Maybe both. We were puzzling at...

Sometimes they [people] throw off their freedom so quickly, you’d think it was burning them.

… she gave me a look that deftly combined tenderness with revulsion. To this day the memory of that look still visits me like a Jehovah’s Witness: uninvited and tireless.

Are you listening, Jasper? Sometimes you’ll be walking in the city late at night, and a woman walking in front of you will spin her head around and then cross the street simply because some...