Excerpts From Dandy In The Underworld. Sebastian Horsley. Harper Perennial 2007.

26. True longing must always be directed to something unattainable.

32. Style is when they're running you out of town and you make it look as if you're leading the parade.

37. All that matters is a sense of style in dying--one must go out glamorously . . . As a rule she lived on booze and pills and never got out of bed except for funerals.

40. . . . where there is a conflict between illusion and reality, reality should be requested to give in gracefully.

40. Years later, she came to visit me in a drugs clinic. I was lying in bed withdrawing savagely from crack and heroin. I was looking and feeling fit only for the undertaker. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a blazing Technicolor explosion which I took to be a fruit cart. It was Mother. She waltzed in clad toe to crown in velvet and silk and perched on the end of the bed. 'Have I failed you as a mother, Sylvester?' 'It's Sebastian, Mother.'

51. Stepfather decided that our relationship was 'unhealthy' and 'antisocial'. Remarks were made about our sexuality. Steve was banished for ever from the home. All this did was inflame our love: there is always a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable. I spent my days in a silent rage throwing darts dipped in red paint at photographs of Stepfather. As all teenagers know, impotent hatred is the most horrible of all emotions; one should hate nobody whom one cannot destroy.

51. Like many people who have nothing to do, I was resentful of any claims on my time . . .