Sometimes we have to be judged by our one-offs.

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!)

Life isn't, and has never been, a 2-0 home victory after a fish and chip lunch.

I guess I should have forgotten about it ages ago, but forgetting isn't something I'm very good at.

Yes, yes, I know all the jokes. What else could I have expected at Highbury? But I went to Chelsea and to Tottenham and to Rangers, and saw the same thing: that the natural state of a football fan is bitter disappointment, no matter what the score.

I don't believe in Heaven or anything. But I want to be the kind of person that qualifies for entry anyway.

Phone calls like ours only happen when you've spent several years hurting and being hurt, until every work you utter or hear becomes coded and loaded, as complicated and full of subtext as a bleak and brilliant play.