You don't get depressed because bad things happen to you. That's getting pissed off and annoyed. That's reasonable. Someone hits you in the face you go ow, you know that's... but depression is something that happens like weather to you inside you.

I get an urge, like a pregnant elephant, to go away and give birth to a book.

Personally, I'd never seen a graphic novel. I knew they existed because friends of mine like Jonathan Ross collect them and some very literate and intelligent people really rate the graphic novel as a form.

I was happy there. Which is to say I was not unhappy there. Unhappiness and happiness I have always been able to carry about with me, irrespective of place and people, because I have never joined in.

The service took place on one of those afternoons that occur only in the past.

I never quite got the hang of the getting drunk & fondling the thighs [of all the cumbersome young males] business... whether that makes me a gallant & proper gentleman, a cowardly wuss or an unadventurous prude, I cannot make out

A real education takes place, not in the lecture hall or library, but in the rooms of friends, with earnest frolic and happy disputation.