In every life there is a moment. A crisis. One that says: what I believe is wrong. It happens to everyone, the only difference is how that knowledge changes them.

The most human of words, the implication being that healthy normal life is covering something – the violence that is there underneath, the violence I had seen in Gulliver the night before. To be healthy meant to be covered. Clothed. Literally and metaphorically.

So, we must conclude that madness is sometimes a question of time, and sometimes of postcode. Basically, the key rule is, if you want to appear sane on Earth you have to be in the right place, wearing the right clothes, saying the right things, and only stepping on the right kind of grass.

Walt Whitman was right about at least one thing. You will contradict yourself. You are large. You contain multitudes. 39. No one is ever completely

Accidents, imperfections, placed inside a pretty pattern. Asymmetry. The defiance of mathematics. I thought about my speech at the Museum of Quadratic Equations.

You can’t find happiness looking for the meaning of life. Meaning is only the third most important thing. It comes after loving and being.

Because, yes, sure, God could not exist. But then neither could humans. So, if they believed in themselves – the logic must go – why not believe in something that was only a fraction more unlikely?

That it will never come again, Is what makes life so sweet. – Emily Dickinson

There are no new ingredients in the universe, and humans – however they may look – are made of roughly the same things we are.