"These feelings were exactly what he had been so afraid of, and this was why he had been so sure that falling in love was rubbish, and, surprise surprise, it was rubbish, and ... and it was too late."

“I’ve been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, and, frankly, I think my guts have shit for brains.”

“Where's the superficial? I was, and therefore am, dim, gloomy, a drag, unfashionable, unfanciable, and awkward. This doesn't seem like superficial to me. These aren't flesh wounds. These are life-threatening thrusts into the internal organs.”

“Each day was a bad day, but he survived by kidding himself that each day was somehow unconnected to the day before.”

“I'm sorry, but there's no disturbed mental balance here, my friend. I'd say he got it just right. Bad thing upon bad thing upon bad thing... Surely that's fair enough? Surely the coroner's report should read, "He took his own life after sober and careful contemplation of the fucking shambles it had become.”

“And another way of explaining it is that shit happens, and there's no space too small, too dark and airless and fucking hopeless, for people to crawl into.”

“By the early seventies I had become an Englishman — that is to say, I hated England just as much as half my compatriots seemed to do.”