You start out wanting to change the world through language, and end up thinking it’s enough to tell a few good jokes.
Their friendship was like a wilted bunch of flowers that she insisted on topping up with water. Why not let it die instead?
He has found himself more and more reliant on her at exactly the point that she has become less available to him.
This isn’t a letter, it’s a gift.
Be good. Do something good.
As soon as she’d met him at the arrivals gate on his return from Thailand, lithe and brown and shaven-headed, she knew that there was no chance of a relationship between them. Too much had happened to him, too little had happened to her.
She glanced at the other diners, all of them going into their act, and thought is this what it all boils down to? Romantic love, is this all it is, a talent show?
Letters, like compilation tapes, were really vehicles for unexpressed emotions and she was clearly putting far too much time and energy into them.
You must do what you enjoy.
She made you decent, and in return you made her so happy.
Time to tidy up your life. Time to start again.
I’ve only ever been recognised in the street once. In Sweden, strangely.
If she does have a failing, and it’s obviously only a tiny one, it’s that she doesn’t seem particularly curious about other people, or me, anyway.
She used to pride herself on her refusal to see two sides of an argument, but increasingly she accepts that issues are more ambiguous and complicated than she once thought.
At university, I used to write silly little sketches and monologues, but never fiction.
And you stupid, stupid woman, stupid for caring, stupid for thinking that he cared.
Imagine staying awake all night not because you’re worried about the future but because it’s FUN.
Everything was fine, and she had the rare, new sensation of being exactly where she wanted to be.
At some point you’ll have to get serious about life.
It would be inappropiate, undignified, at 38, to conduct friendships or love affairs with the ardour or intensity of a 22 year old. Falling in love like that? Writing poetry? Crying at pop songs? Dragging people into photobooths? Taking a whole day to make a compilation tape? Asking people if they wanted to share your bed, just for company? If you quoted Bob Dylan or TS Eliot or, god forbid, Brecht at someone these days they would smile politely and step quietly backwards, and who would blame them? Ridiculous, at 38, to expect a song or book or film to change your life.