Where I come from," said Archie, "a bloke likes to get to know a girl before he marries her." "Where you come from it is customary to boil vegetables until they fall apart. This does not mean," said Samad tersely, "that it is a good idea.

I like books that don't give you an easy ride. I like the feeling of discomfort. The sense of being implicated.

He traced the genealogy of the feeling.

Are there other people who, when watching a documentary set in a prison, secretly think, as I have, 'Wish I had all that time to read'?

This is what divorce is: taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love.

Anyone over the age of thirty catching a bus can consider himself a failure.

I used to take that God's-eye view as a comfort when I was a child. I'd think, "Well, we couldn't find the world meaningful at all if it weren't for death." Of course, that is the smuggest and most intolerable of all perspectives because I'm not suffering from the death or the pain.