I don’t mind nothing happening in a book, but nothing happening in a phony way–characters saying things people never say, doing jobs that don’t fit, the whole works–is simply asking too much of a reader....

It’s music rage, which is like road rage, only more righteous. When you get road rage, a tiny part of you knows you’re being a jerk, but when you get music rage, you’re carrying out...

I see now that dismissing YA books because you’re not a young adult is a little bit like refusing to watch thrillers on the grounds that you’re not a policeman or a dangerous criminal, and...

It is a strange paradox that while the grief of football fans(and it is real grief) is private – we each have an individual relationship with our clubs, and I think that we are secretly...

He was kind, he was single, he was vulnerable, he made her laugh (not always intentionally, true, but often enough). Every time she saw him, he seemed to have become a little more handsome.

when she removed my hand from her chest for the one hundred thousandth time. Attack and defense, invasion and repulsion… it was as if breasts were little pieces of property that had been unlawfully annexed...

(about organizing books in his home library, and putting a book in the “Arts and Lit non-fiction section)I personally find that for domestic purposes, the Trivial Pursuit system works better than Dewey.

A veces hemos de ser juzgados por nuestros actos únicos.

You don’t ask people with knives in their stomachs what would make them happy; happiness is no longer the point. It’s all about survival; it’s all about whether you pull the knife out and bleed...

We are never allowed to forget that some books are badly written; we should remember that sometimes they’re badly read, too.

Experience, then, was something that enabled you to do nothing with a clear conscience. Experience was an overrated quality.

I personally find that for domestic purposes, the Trivial Pursuit system works better than Dewey.

Funny + sad is what I’m pitching for, every time.

A middle-aged woman who looked like someone’s cleaning lady, a shrieking adolescent lunatic and a talkshow host with an orange face… It didn’t add up. Suicide wasn’t invented for people like this. It was invented...

What good were real feelings anyway?

Complaining about boring football is a little like complaining about the sad ending of King Lear: it misses the point somehow.

There isn’t so much to be afraid of, out there. I can remember thinking it was funny to find that out, on the last night of my life; I’d spent the rest of it being...

What was in it for me? I wasn’t asking for any sort of reciprocation, after all. Why didn’t she want her erogenous zones stimulated? I have no idea. All I know is that you could,...

A while back, when Dick and Barry and I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like, Barry proposed the idea of a questionnaire for prospective partners.

Defeated misery is what all sport is about, eventually, if you follow the story for long enough; all sportsmen know this.

There had been times when he knew, somewhere in him, that he would get used to it, whatever it was, because he had learnt that some hard things became softer after a very little while.

I don’t have the heart to tell my sons that the older one gets, the less funny literature becomes—and they would refuse to believe me if I tried to explain that some people don’t think...

It didn’t help that I was never allowed to study anything remotely contemporary until the last year of university: there was never any sense of that leading to this. If anything, my education gave me...

I’m still pretty sick about what I’ve lost, but I only admit it to myself late at night, which is probably why I’m not the best sleeper.