What came first – the music or the misery? Did I listen to the music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to the music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?

On New Year's Eve he ould make a resolution to recover some his previous scepticism, but until then he would do as the Romans do, and smile at people even if he disapproved of them

Love and charity share the same root word (caritas). How is that possible, when everything in our recent history suggest they cannot coexist, that they are antiethical, that if you put the two of them together in a sack they would bite and scratch and scream, until one of them is torn apart?

Human beings are millions of things in one day.

It's often the way that people who take their work seriously laugh at stupid jokes; it's as if they are under-humored and, as a consequence, suffer from premature laugh-ejaculation.

The artistic temperament is particularly unhelpful if it is just that, with no end product.

Just because it's a relationship, and it's based on soppy stuff, it doesn't mean you can't make intellectual decisions about it. Sometimes you just have to, otherwise you'll never get anywhere. That's where I've been going wrong. I've been letting the weather and my stomach muscles and a great chord change in a Pretenders single make up my mind for me, and I want to do it for myself.