I'm a good person. In most ways. But I'm beginning to think that being a good person in most ways doesn't count for anything very much, if you're a bad person in one way.

You can wait forever for the muse to sit on your shoulder, but most of the time you know what has to be done and inspiration is not going to help you.

[H]ow was I supposed to get excited about the oppression of females if they couldn't be trusted to stay upright during the final minutes of a desperately close promotion campaign?

For the best part of 40 years she had genuinely believed that not doing things would somehow prevent regret, when, of course, the exact opposite was true.

I burst into tears and I cry and cry until it feels as though it is not salt and water being squeezed from my eyes, but blood.

I have learned things from the game. Much of my knowledge of locations in Britain and Europe comes not from school, but from away games or the sports pages, and hooliganism has given me both a taste for sociology and a degree of fieldwork experience. I have learned the value of investing time and emotion in things I cannot control, and of belonging to a community whose aspirations I share completely and uncritically.

I'm simply pointing out that what happens to us isn't the whole story. That I continue to exist even when we're not together.