Quotes from Harry Bingham

Those things gave us enough, more than enough, for a search warrant. One of those steel-ram, siren blaring, you're-so-totally-fucked raids that every copper loves more than anything, me included.

One of those thick red carpets that seems to trap time. I have one

wish I was a better human. I wish we had food for the hungry and harmony between nations.

Jackson uses the silence to give me a bunch of stapled sheets. The title page says: Torture Survivors' Handbook. Information on Support and Resources for Torture Survivors in the UK. "This thing is mostly aimed at people coming here from abroad. But you should read it. And use it." I hold the book in my hands. I say, "They got the apostrophe in the right place. That's good.

feel a rush of something. Pride, I think. I'm not always good at naming my feelings – it's something I used to practice

Some people are better as corpses. They're easier to like.

Two bits of advice. One, always write what you love. Two, always write what the market wants. It's not that those two things are in opposition really. It's just that you have to find an intersection between the two. Writing an unmarketable book just strikes me as silly. Writing a book you don't love – now that would be evil.

Then I stare at my face in the mirror for a minute or two, wondering if it feels like mine. In Bram Stoker's Dracula, the dark count is invisible in mirrors and I often feel something similar is true of me too. I can't feel any deep relationship between the face that is mine and the person I am. Like they're two different things. I don't

There are only two ways a person can die. Their heart or their lungs.

ownership of Mark Mortimer's firm, Barry

A lot of heroin overdose isn't overdose at all. It's the same dose as normal, but taken in an unfamiliar setting, it overrides the body's homeostatic

White ceiling tiles. Low-energy bulbs in cylindrical down-lighters. Walls and chairs in Hospital Yellow. A colour so blatantly designed to soothe those in medical distress that it makes me want to bubble blood from the corners of my mouth, just to show it who's boss. 'I

but silence is frightening to the frightened

How does anyone think that 'attempted murder' counts the same as actual murder? They shouldn't even call it 'attempted': that's just a way to flatter failure.

Trout-coloured water breaking over rocks.

chosen to complement the curtains and feel quite unjustifiably proud that that a sister of mine

When I die - die properly, I mean - I'd want to feel the whole process. I'd want my ordinary seconds to expand, suddenly, to hours, so that I could watch, one by one, as my cells figured out that things weren't working any more. As, one by one, they drew the curtains, flipped the lights, slipped quietly away into the dark.

Famous for my ignorance, me.

Experimenting later, in a coffee shop toilet, I discover that I have acquired a couple of raking-tools-cum-hairgrips. Also a tube of mascara: something called Glam'Eyes Lash Flirt, a product which would attract me more had it been less reckless with its apostrophe.

Buzz and Dad are talking about a rugby player called Jones. I listen in for a while, but there seem to be at least four different Joneses in question, which seems excessive, even by Welsh standards.

like a rugby type buying lingerie for his wife. But still.

And a plastic grocery bag containing a

He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.

If you ignore the part-time or self-published component of the survey, and look only at full-time, traditionally published authors, incomes look a little better Ã¢â'¬â€œ though at $20,300 annually, you are going to need a trust fund, a rich partner or a sideline in computer fraud to make ends meet. The same basic picture applies in the UK and elsewhere.