Dennis Nilsen quotes:

I saw him...at peace in my armchair. I remember wishing he could stay in peace like that forever. I had a feeling of easing his burden with my strength.

Loneliness is a long unbearable pain,

In the morning he was lying dead on one of the beds fully clothed. He was dead. I got the impression he wanted to go, and I must have killed him. I can't remember strangling him. I just sat there shocked.

I wish I could stop but I could not. I had no other thrill or happiness.

Loneliness is a long, unbearable pain....There was never a place for me in the scheme of things....I had become a living fantasy on a theme in dark, endless dirges....I made another world, and real men would enter it and they would never really get hurt at all in the vivid, unreal laws of the dream. I caused dreams which caused death. This is my crime.

I don't lose sleep over what I have done or have nightmares about it.

I have started down the avenue of death and depression of a new kind of flatmate.

The population at large is neither 'ordinary' or 'normal'. They seem to be bound together by a collective ignorance of themselves and what they are. They have, every one of them, got their deep dark thoughts with many a skeleton rattling in their secret cupboards. Their fascination with 'types' like myself plagues them with the mystery of why and how a living person can actually do things which may be only those dark images and acts secretly within them. I believe they can identify with these 'dark images and acts' and loathe anything which reminds them of this dark side of themselves.

I caused dreams which caused death. This is my crime.

I am damned and damned and damned. How in heaven's name could I have done any of it?

I have judged myself more harshly than any court ever could.