Hey, great idea: if you have kids, give your partner reading vouchers next Christmas. Each voucher entitles the bearer to two hours' reading time *while the kids are awake*. It might look like a cheapskate present, but parents will appreciate that it costs more in real terms than a Lamborghini.

It's just that romance, with its dips and turns and glooms and highs, its swoops and swoons and blues, is a natural metaphor for music itself

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

I have a really low boredom threshold.

The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don't know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they've been listening to the sad songs longer than they've been living the unhappy lives.

I'm not telling you that suicidal people aren't so far away from people who can get by; I'm telling you that people who can get by aren't so far away from being suicidal.

In other words, it's one of those books you thrust on your partner with an incredulous cry of "This is me!