"I think it’s more difficult to be vegan than gay. I think people have a harder time accepting it; people feel more uncomfortable with a vegan at their dinner table than they do a lesbian. It’s confronting. It’s kind of suggesting that what someone else is doing is bad or wrong, and it hits them on a more personal level. … If somebody is setting there eating a steak watching you eat polenta, they’re thinking that you’re trying to preach to them or you’re trying to convert them in some way. Whereas with being gay, I don’t think anyone’s concerned that that’s the agenda. “Hey, Mom, you also have to be gay. I’m gay and so should you be!” Certainly when I told her that I was vegan, it forced her to look at her habits."

"I’m vegan. It’s really changed, like, my eyes, my, you know, everything."

"She was devastatingly cruel about our home town and told an elaborate, embossed tale about how she made good her escape. She referred to it as 'The Planet Brisbane' and ridiculed its unpleasant combination of smug self-satisfaction and provincial defensiveness."

"Ah, you see, Rachel, only strivers know about the stealthiness of time. No matter how young they are."

"She walked and walked, daring to be happy, risking the wrath of the Gods. She raised her large smiling face to the sun and when she was not struck down, dared to hope for herself again."

"'Still got your eyes closed, Rach?' she called. 'You should have stayed in Brisbane where it's safe!'"

"And so I set these things down before the onset of the first of a thousand small physical degradations as, in a still-distant suburb, Death strides whistling towards me."

"He would have been a handful in any society. He is a misfit and fully conscious of it. The punctilio of his old-world manners, the dandified scrupulosity of his Savile Row suits, are compelled by an unsleeping awareness that he has no more business among ordinary human beings than a Venusian."

"Although there were many who did the dirty on him in the envious world of letters, Stephen* never let any of them live rent-free in his brain."

"There is no more terrible fate for a comedian than to be taken seriously."