There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.

The Booker triumph of Graham Swift's moving, effortlessly profound Last Orders is a vindication of the quiet, much-misunderstood path this fine writer chose to take after the brilliance of Waterland more than ten years ago.

There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable.

I think jogging is bad for your health. All that pressure on the knees and back cannot be good for you.

What is the point of worrying oneself too much about what one could or could not have done to control the course one's life took? Surely it is enough that the likes of you and I at least try to make our small contribution count for something true and worthy. And if some of us are prepared to sacrifice much in life in order to pursue such aspirations, surely that in itself, whatever the outcome, cause for pride and contentment.

I really have to think of the things fiction can do that film can't and play to the strengths of the novel. With a novel you can get right inside somebody's head.

So why not become a mongrel? It's healthy