Love, it turns out, is as undemocratic as money, so it accumulates around people who have plenty of it already: the sane, the healthy, the lovable.

When you get older, it feels like happy memories and sad memories are pretty much the same thing. It is all just emotion in the end. And any of it can make you weep.

...I feel as though I made a face and the wind changed, and now I have to go through life grimacing in this horrible way.

She thought I was...soulful, by which I think she means that I don't say much and I always look vaguely pissed off.

Why is failure the first thing I think of when I find myself in this sort of situation? Why can't I just enjoy myself? But if you have to ask the question, then you know you're lost: self-consciousness is a man's worst enemy. Already I'm wondering whether she's as aware of my erection as I am.

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

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?