Conrad Williams

To those of you who are yet to plunge into the zygote pool and want to know what both plumbless horror and pure love feels like, have yourself a baby...

He was a prisoner to the calendar, he realised, as we all were. He thought in little boxes that were to be ticked off and filled with things to do. Almost every day he thought back to what he had been doing ten years ago, twenty years ago, further. He lived in the past, by his diary. He was a history man, his head full of dead leaves. It was a form of reassurance, he knew. There were too many roads into the future and he didn't like not having a map for it.("Wait")

Some people were born to the shape they would occupy all their lives.("Wait")

The public has an exalted view of authors, and rightly so. Great writers impact deeply on our imagination. And yet, behind the kudos, there sometimes lurks a person at odds with the nobility of the author photo or the 'sheer humanity' of the prose style.

You could be the ugliest, nastiest most miserable piece of shit known to man, but if you had a beating heart there was always a chance you'd turn into a diamond after a million years.