We are never allowed to forget that some books are badly written; we should remember that sometimes they're badly read, too.

Unhappiness really meant something back then. Now it's just a drag, like a cold or having no money.

He would read up on parenting, if he thought it would help, but his errors always seemed too basic for the manuals. "Always tell your kids they have siblings..." He couldn't imagine any child-raising guru taking the trouble to write that down. Maybe there was a gap in the market.

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.

It was hopeless, life, really. It was set up all wrong.

You have to work at relationships. You can’t just walk out on them every time something goes wrong.

I have always been accused of taking the things I love – football, of course, but also books and records – much too seriously, and I do feel a kind of anger when I hear a bad record, or when someone is lukewarm about a book that means a lot to me. Perhaps it was these desperate, bitter men in the West Stand at Arsenal who taught me how to get angry in this way; and perhaps it is why I earn some of my living as a critic – maybe it’s those voices I can hear when I write. ‘You’re a WANKER, X.’ ‘The Booker Prize? THE BOOKER PRIZE? They should give that to me for having to read you.