Schadenfreude Is So Nutritious.

Regard Yourself As A Small Corporation Of One. Take Yourself Off On Team-building Exercises (long Walks). Hold A Christmas Party Every Year At Which You Stand In The Corner Of Your Writing Room, Shouting Very Loudly To Yourself While Drinking A Bottle Of White Wine. Then Masturbate Under The Desk. The Following Day You Will Feel A Deep And Cohering Sense Of Embarrassment.

Once The Working Classes Were In Chains, Now They're In Chain Restaurants.

To Attempt To Write Seriously Is Always, I Feel, To Fail - The Disjunction Between My Beautifully Sonorous, Accurate And Painfully Affecting Mental Content, And The Leaden, Halting Sentences On The Page Always Seems A Dreadful Falling Short.

Death, The Real Simile For Disease - For When We Are Ill, Do We Not Always Feel Like We Are Dying, Even If It's Only A Little? - Remains, Despite Our Secularism, The Most Metaphoricised Phenomenon Of All.

For Myself, I Haven't Been Content To Carry On Producing Books That Merely Strain Against The Conventions - As I've Grown Older, And Realised That There Aren't That Many Books Left For Me To Write, So I've Become Determined That They Should Be The Fictive Equivalent Of Ripping The Damn Corset Off Altogether And Chucking It On The Fire.