There’s this saying: in an all-blue world, colour doesn’t exist... If something seems strange, you question it; but if the outside world is too distant to use as a comparison then nothing seems strange.
You fish, swim, eat, laze around, and everyone’s so friendly. It’s such simple stuff, but... If i could stop the world and restart life, put the clock back, i think I’d restart it like this. For everyone.
He spoke in english. Not flawlessly by any means. Not like a Nazi POW camp commandant who appreciates english poetry and says things like ‘you know, we are much alike, you and I I’. But good enough.
Escape through travel works. Almost from the moment I boarded my flight, life in England became meaningless. Seat-belt signs lit up, problems switched off. Broken armrests took precedence over broken hearts. By the time the plane was airborne I’d forgotten England even existed.
If I’d learnt one thing from travelling, it was that the way to get things done was to go ahead and do them. Don’t talk about going to Borneo. Book a ticket, get a visa, pack a bag, and it just happens.
I did keep a travel diary once and it was a big mistake. All I remember of that trip is what I bothered to write down.
I knew my affection for the Philippines was equally as telling: a democracy on paper, apparently well ordered, regularly subverted by irrational chaos. A place where I’d felt instantly at home.
Waking was the most reliable part of a dream, as built into dreams as death is to life. You dream, you wake: you live, you die.
Well, if there’s an infinite amount of chances for something to happen, then eventually it will happen – no matter how small the likelihood.
If you look at the whole life of the planet, we – you know, Man – has only been around for a few blinks of an eye. So if the infection wipes us all out, that is a return to normality.
I’ve written original material before, where I’ve come up with the idea and the characters myself, and that’s definitely very different to working with someone else’s characters and stories.
Every dream that anyone ever has is theirs alone and they never manage to share it. And they never manage to remember it either. Not truly or accurately. Not as it was. Our memories and our vocabularies aren’t up to the job.
Tourists went on holidays while travellers did something else. They travelled.
I think everything I write is from an atheist perspective. I mean, it’s partly from an atheist perspective because I’m an atheist, and I’m just not really interested in religious-based questions.