Gavin Hills' style of writing got me at first page. But he's dead. He died in May of 1997 when I was 14 years old.


All I have of Mr Hills is his collected writings from a book titled Bliss To Be Alive.

Whether it is a book of fiction or not, the first few words often tell so much of how the rest of the content is going to be, usually. Hills wrote splendidly that I've just got to share some of his worth-pondering over quotes here.

Check out some of Hills' beautiful lines pulled out from the dusty old book I purchased from the gloriously-discounted section of the local book store.

Gavin Hills' words begin here:

I often wonder what my brain does in the void. Does it just switch off? Is this the natural state of the chicken-packer or check-out girl? Or, as I fear, is this god's time? Is this what mystics, gurus and unisex rectors call 'real being'? It's definitely, a kind of infinity, a timeless state of oblivion that we could construe as heavenly? But time's a funny thing. It's getting faster.

One man's amazing hallucination is another man's paranoid hell. So feeling shit has a lot more to do with interpretation than a rigid fatalism. How I want to rise above, to float in the clouds, staring at our world with the wisdom of a smiling sage.


Hundred of years of therapy, and we're still going mad; how we love a problem in our lives. And how our modern culture, with its enthusiasm for telling people how to look and behave, supplies them. You don't catch bulimia, anorexia, frigidity, post-natal depression, pre-coital trauma et al. biologically; you get infected with them from the pollution of our society.


I've been studying rather sad people to learn how to be happy. Pushing your tongue to the top of your mouth apparently creates some happy juice in your brain. So do the complex sugars of fruit juice. Such facts should be spread to all the miserable hordes. I'm not up on the true medical nature of these facts, or indeed whether or not they work. I only know that, having researched and then experimented with them, I have, as a result, found myself a considerably happier person. You just thrust your tongue onto the squidgy bit at the top of your mouth and drink fruit juice. Not at the same time - that would only lead to misery and despair.


Mood-swings are all the rage. You know what it's like: one day you're fine, the next it's black. It's a kind of post-modern take on having a real character. The other day I was so overwhelmed by optimism and a sense that somehow, now, everything was going to be all right, that I managed to get out of bed without necking a few Nurofen and crying.


More on Hills here. You can get his book here.

Music to mellow out to:
Sibylle Baier - I Lost Something in the Hills
Moddi - Smoke
Susan Christie - Rainy Day

What's your type of inspiring books to read? If you have suggestions, please drop them down below. Thanks!

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