One knows one's madnesses, by and large. By and large the knowledge is vacuous. The notion of naming the beast to conquer it is the idiot optimism of psychotherapy. Glen Duncan More Quotes by Glen Duncan More Quotes From Glen Duncan That's what happens when you keep a secret from someone you love: you start to hate them for allowing you to prove your own willingness to deceive them. Glen Duncan hate secret love-you Literature is humanity's broad-minded alter-ego, with room in its heart for monsters, even for you. It's humanity without the judgement. Glen Duncan ego judgement heart Coffee justifies the existence of the word 'aroma'. Glen Duncan aroma existence coffee Telling the truth is a beautiful act even if the truth itself is ugly. Glen Duncan ugly truth beautiful Life, like the boring drunk at the office party, keeps seeking you out, leaning on you, killing you with pointless yarns and laughing bad-breathed in your face at its own unfunny jokes. Glen Duncan yarn party life I'm with Milton and the Rolling Stones: I don't find the Devil an unsympathetic character. But in any case, my fiction is populated as much by people who do good as it is by those who do bad. I'm interested in imaginatively accommodating as much of the human as possible, for which you need both moral extremes and everything in between. Glen Duncan devil character people You think God will never forgive you, but the only God is beauty and beauty always forgives. It forgives with its infinite indifference. Glen Duncan forgiving beauty thinking With adolescent egotism and a lot of money one can pretty much rule the world. Glen Duncan egotism youth world She understood the genre constraints, the decencies were supposed to be observing. The morally cosy vision allows the embrace of monstrosity only as a reaction to suffering or as an act of rage against the Almighty. Vampire interviewee Louis is in despair at his brother’s death when he accepts Lestat’s offer. Frankenstein’s creature is driven to violence by the violence done to him. Even Lucifer’s rebellion emerges from the agony of injured price. The message is clear: By all means become an abomination—but only while unhinged by grief or wrath. Glen Duncan grief brother mean Falling in love makes the unknown known. Falling out of love reverses the process. Glen Duncan reverse falling-in-love process The first horror is there's horror. The second is you accommodate it. Glen Duncan accommodate horror firsts There’s a reason humans peg-out around eighty: prose fatigue. It looks like organ failure or cancer or stroke but it’s really just the inability to carry on clambering through the assault course of mundane cause and effect. If we ask Sheila then we can’t ask Ron. If I have the kippers now then it’s quiche for tea. Four score years is about all the ifs and thens you can take. Dementia’s the sane realisation you just can’t be doing with all that anymore. Glen Duncan ifs-and cancer years The first thing to say about Eve is that she was a big improvement on the Adam design, or that Adam was an extremely misguided variation on the Eve design. (Consider testicles. Two concentrated nuclei of absolute vulnerability. Where? Dangling between the legs. I rest my case.) Glen Duncan variation design two You can't blame me. I mean that literally. You're incapable of blaming me. You're human. Being human is choosing freedom over imprisonment, autonomy over dependency, liberty over servitude. You can't blame me because you know (come on, man, you've always known) that the idea of spending eternity with nothing to do except praise God is utterly unappealing. You'd be catatonic after an hour. Heaven's a swiz because to get in you have to leave yourself outside. You can't blame me because -- now do please be honest with yourself for once -- you'd have left, too. Glen Duncan men mean ideas Time, you'll be pleased to know--and since one must start somewhere--was created in creation. The question What was there before creation? is meaningless. Time is a property of creation, therefore before creation there was no before creation. Glen Duncan property creation time Snow makes cities innocent again, reveals the frailty of the human gesture against the void. Glen Duncan gestures cities snow Any seasoned deal maker will tell you that spontaneous negotiation's a bad strategy; the ad hoc approach will leave you ripped-off, busted, conned, stiffed, outsmarted and generally holding the shitty end of the stick. Glen Duncan spontaneous strategy sticks I hated the words. Each one was like a big live insect in my mouth. Glen Duncan insects bigs mouths No amount of violence you've done to others prepares you for violence done to yourself. Glen Duncan amount violence done Pain is beyond reason, an obliterating giant stupidity to which all your history of jokes and nuance and ideas and caresses is nothing, simply nothing. Glen Duncan stupidity pain ideas
