I worked out what would make me happy, and I worked out what I wanted to do, and I trained myself to do the job that would make those two things happen

"You cut yourself off from all sorts of experiences because you tell yourself you are 'not that sort of person'" "But, I’m not." "How do you know? You’ve done nothing, been nowhere. How do you have the faintest idea what kind of person you are?"

You know, you spend your whole life feeling like you don't quite fit in anywhere. And then you walk into a room one day, whether it's at university or an office or some kind of club, and you just go, 'Ah. There they are.' And suddenly you feel at home.

But don't blame me for the food. My wife knows a hundred and one ways to incinerate a cow, and as far as I can tell she's still experimenting.

Because even if the whole world was throwing rocks at you, if you still had your mother or father at your back, you'd be okay.

And then, just like that, my heart broke. My face crumpled, my composure went and I held him tightly and I stopped caring that he could feel the shudder of my sobbing body because grief swamped me. It overwhelmed me and tore at my heart and my stomach and my head and it pulled me under, and I couldn’t bear it. I honestly thought I couldn’t bear it.

...I told him a story of two people. Two people who shouldn't have met, and who didn't like each other much when they did, but who found they were the only two people in the world who could possibly have understood each other.