Books

"One of the things that’s perennially fascinating about the world is the way people sell things to themselves. If people feel the need to sell something to themselves, that tells its own tale."

You have to be tough to be a drug addict. You have to sit there a lot of the time and be sick. So many times I thought, "I am not too much of a wuss to be a drug user."

"I recall my file of e-mails from reporters, academics, filmmakers, and activists who want me to introduce them to sex workers so that they can tell their stories, or organise them, without an understanding that they -we- are also reporters, academics, filmmakers, and activists, and are doing it ourselves."

One afternoon she was drying on the rock, and she felt a thread of sunlight inside her chest. She had never believed in the existence of a soul except in abstract terms, yet she felt this, and she knew it was her soul. She wasn’t planning to do anything with it; she just liked knowing it was there. When she told me this story, I immediately began to picture myself with her, so I never used to like it when she told it to anyone else. Later, I realized no one else understands what the story’s about. Everyone seems to think it’s about religion, but what it really means is that she knows how to be alone.

"Of course, I said to myself, the essay on Dido is mine, the capacity to formulate beautiful sentences comes from me, but didn't I work it out with her, didn't we excite each other in turn, didn't my passion grow in the warmth of hers?"