It struck him that how you spent Christmas was a message to the world about where you were in life, some indication of how deep a hole you had managed to burrow for yourself

That’s why; he’s worried about how his life is turning out, and he’s lonely, and lonely people are the bitterest of them all

The truth about life was that nothing ever ended until you died, and even then you just left a whole bunch of unresolved narratives behind you.

A man who wants to die feels angry and full of life and desperate and bored and exhausted, all at the same time; he wants to fight everyone, and he wants to curl up in a ball and hide in a cupboard somewhere. He wants to say sorry to everyone, and he wants everyone to know just how badly they've all let him down.

Where would David Copperfield be if Dickens had gone to writing classes? Probably about seventy minor characters short, is where. (Did you know that Dickens is estimated to have invented thirteen thousand characters? Thirteen thousand! The population of a small town!)

Over the last couple of years, the photos of me when I was a kid... well, they've started to give me a little pang or something - not unhappiness, exactly, but some kind of quiet, deep regret... I keep wanting to apologize to the little guy: "I'm sorry, I've let you down. I was the person who was supposed to look after you, but I blew it: I made wrong decisions at bad times, and I turned you into me.

But the internet had changed everything: nobody was forgotten anymore.