"People feel that just simply because they're having this cemented communion with another person that the two of you will become whole, which is something I detested. I hate that, that implication. It's not true, anyway. Ultimately, you're on your own, whatever happens in life, however you go through life. You die on your own. You have to go to the dentist on your own! It's like all the serious things in life are things that you feel on your own."

"Well, I think when I was a child, more than anything else I wanted not to be ordinary. And I wanted to be considered to be a bit peculiar. When I was at school I wanted to be peculiar and I was delighted when I was at secondary school and I was actually thought to be peculiar. It was fantastically good for me because I looked around me and I thought, 'Well, however you are I don't want to be like you, so if you think I'm unbalanced then I'm delighted.' That really stayed with me."

"There's a famous quote which goes something like, 'You are what you are, having secretly become what you wanted to be'. Maybe there's some truth to that. We like to think that society shapes us, but I don't think that that's the way it happens."

"But because I'm such an obsessive creature I become so immensely devoted to the people that I like, practically to the point of hospitalisation. I have boxes and boxes at home, cuttings and old books. People who visit me can't believe the streams of documentation I have on the people I like."