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?

We have one of those conversations where every thing clicks, meshes, corresponds, locks, where even our pauses, even our punctuation marks, seem to be nodding in agreement.

But I suspect that all writers come up with premises of some kind, fragments of narrative or scenarios, in the course of a working week.

Not for the first time in my life, and certainly not for the last, a self-righteous gloom had edged out all semblance of logic.

That was his mother. When she wasn't crying over the breakfast cereal, she was laughing about killing herself.

[about suicide] And why is it the biggest sin of all? All your life you're told that you'll be going to this marvellous place when you pass on. And the one thing you can do to get you there a bit quicker is something that stops you getting there at all. Oh, I can see that it's a kind of queue­jumping. But if someone jumps the queue at the Post Office, people tut. Or sometimes they say, “Excuse me, I was here first.” They don't say, “You will be consumed by hellfire for all eternity.” That would be a bit strong.

Record stores can't save your life. But they can give you a better one.