There should be a word for that brief period just after waking when the mind is full of warm pink nothing. You lie there entirely empty of thought, except for a growing suspicion that heading towards you, like a sockful of damp sand in a nocturnal alleyway, are all the recollections you'd really rather do without, and which amount to the fact that the only mitigating factor in your horrible future is the certainty that it will be quite short.

Anyway, it's like with bikes,' said the first speaker authoritatively. 'I thought I was going to get this bike with seven gears and one of them razorblade saddles and purple paint and everything, and they gave me this light blue one. With a basket. A girl's bike.' 'Well. You're a girl,' said one of the others. 'That's sexism, that is. Going around giving people girly presents just because they're a girl.

He was, he would be the first to admit, a coward, an incompetent, and not even very good at being a failure.

No one knew where you were before you were born, but when you were born, it wasn't long before you found you'd arrived with your return ticket already punched.

Lessee...he'd gone off after the funeral and gotten drunk. No, not drunk, another word, ended with "er." Drunker. that was it.

Sometimes you had to take a look at yourself and then look away.

Look out! He's got a daisy!