They were not me, their feelings could never be mine, and I could only go deeper into myself, into a darkness which no light could find, and in the end I still had to come out and meet the world on its own terms.

I saw the future, and ran away to China.

If I had studied law, none of this would have happened. But I didn't think about the future.

I had nothing to say, but this didn't stop me.

I understood my talent was for feeling and gratification, and decided to master the techniques of pleasure.

A consoling thought: it could always have been worse.

I had no ambition, and achieved it.

There was a knot in me that I spent 40 years unpicking.

Going through an honest account of my childhood and youth, it was easy to conclude that I deserved the poverty of the life I had accrued, and any good fortune had slipped past the gods as injustice.

Once again, and not even for the first time today, I marvel at the psychedelic wonder of the world and my place in it.

I abandoned mediocrity for disaster.