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.

The chief attraction of the opposite sex for all of us, old and young, men and women: we need someone to save us from the sympathetic smiles in the Sunday-night cinema queue, someone who can stop us from falling down into the pit where the permanently single live with their mums and dads.

contemporary poetry is a kind of Reykjavik, a place where accessibility and intelligence have been fighting a Cold War by proxy for the last half-century.

I'm coming to London next week, by the way, in unhappy circumstances. Are we getting on fine as we are? Or would you like a drink?

my friends don't seem to be friends at all but people whose phone numbers I haven't lost.

It is the act of reading itself that I miss, the opportunity to retreat further and further from the world until I have found some space, some air that isn't stale, that hasn't been breathed by my family a thousand times already.

What harm has he ever done to you?' 'You know what harm he's done me. He offended me with his terrible taste.