I was eating and drinking like a pig, and I was fat as a pig, dissatisfied with myself, and subconsciously I was crying for help. It was my fat Elvis period.

When you're drowning you don't think, I would be incredibly pleased if someone would notice I'm drowning and come and rescue me. You just scream.

Now a spark of hope flashes up, then a sea of despair rages, and always pain; always pain, always despair, and always the same.

There is no more debilitating, crushing, self-defeating, sickening thing in the world - to an individual or to a nation.

Suffering is a big informer, a big catalyst for creation. You take your sadness, your despair, your sense of injustice, and you put it in your work.

We fear violence less than our own feelings. Personal, private, solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone else can inflict.