I’m not telling you that suicidal people aren’t so far away from people who can get by; I’m telling you that people who can get by aren’t so far away from being suicidal.
Sometimes we have to be judged by our one-offs.
When it came down to it, he just wasn’t that engaged. You had to be engaged to be a vegetarian; you had to be engaged to sing “Both Sides Now” with your eyes closed; when it came down to it, you had to be engaged to be a mother.
When even the scrupulously detached BBC is exhorting us to talk to God, you know something is going on.
Life isn’t, and has never been, a 2-0 home victory after a fish and chip lunch.
We were little animals, which is not to imply that by the end of the week we were tearing our tank tops off; just that, metaphorically speaking, we had begun to sniff each other’s bottoms, and we did not find the odor entirely repellent.
Women who disapprove of men – and there’s plenty to disapprove of – should remember how we started out, and how far we had to travel.
I had to nurture those doubts as if they were tiny, sickly kittens, until eventually they became sturdy, healthy grievances, with their own cat doors, which allowed them to wander in and out of our conversation at will.
It takes a child to say the unsayable.
Cynicism is our shared common language, the Esperanto that actually caught on, and though I’m not fluent in it – I like too many things, and I’m not envious of enough people – I know enough to get by.
I really don’t want to be boring, and so many books are so boring!
I have a really low boredom threshold.
You’ll remember someone who broke your heart, and you’ll think to yourself, ‘Oh yes, I remember how that feels.’ But you can’t.
I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it.
Yes, yes, I know all the jokes. What else could I have expected at Highbury? But I went to Chelsea and to Tottenham and to Rangers, and saw the same thing: that the natural state of a football fan is bitter disappointment, no matter what the score.
By the early seventies I had become an Englishman – that is to say, I hated England just as much as half my compatriots seemed to do.
The plain state of being human is dramatic enough for anyone.
On New Year’s Eve he ould make a resolution to recover some his previous scepticism, but until then he would do as the Romans do, and smile at people even if he disapproved of them.
The natural state of the football fan is bitter disappointment, no matter what the score.
But I suspect that all writers come up with premises of some kind, fragments of narrative or scenarios, in the course of a working week.