Memory is the only thing that binds you to earlier selves; for the rest, you become an entirely different being every decade or so, sloughing off the old persona, renewing and moving on. You are not who you were, he told her, nor who you will be.

This is how most people live: alive, but not conscious; conscious but not aware; aware, but intermittently.

Why take drugs specifically designed to send you insane?

A bit of the vagueness of music stops you going completely mad, I imagine.

In the 1970s, British food was beginning to get good, whereas in France it was just starting its long, sad decline. My most memorable meals, however, have been in Italy.

The nicest characters in A Week in December research are, in fact, Muslims - and their religious devotion is one of the things that defines them.

Lonely's like any other organism; competitive and resourceful in the struggle to perpetuate itself.