Mortified at the speed with which intimacy evaporates.

Oh you know me. I have no emotions. I'm a robot. Or a nun. A robot nun.

I know that for every reader who has lost the habit or can't find the time, there are people who've never enjoyed reading and question the value of literature, either as entertainment or education, or believe that a love of books, and of fiction in particular, is sentimental or frivolous.

He wanted to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random, it would be a cool photograph.

Well, it's so hard for books to take off. You give years of your life to something that probably won't happen, so when it does, it feels a little unjust.

No, friends were like clothes: fine while they lasted but eventually they wore thin or you grew out of them.

I had made this mistake once before, on a school trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum, when I followed a sign marked WOMEN, thinking it was an exhibition on the changing roles of women in society, and actually ended up standing in the ladies' toilets.