“I'm sorry, we can't come to the phone right now 'cause we're dead. Feel free to leave a message, but if we don't get back to you, it's probably 'cause we're dead. Have a nice day now.”

“I am truly amazed that every time Apple comes out with a new laptop I am quickly able to identify (in my mind) a real need for it, as in the case of the recent European launch of the new MacBook Air. Which is odd as my existing MacBook is but six months old. But you understand, I can't fit my current model into an A4 envelope, hence I have rather successfully established the 'need.”

“I have always felt that suicide was connected to communication. Not due to a lack of opportunity, but to an impossibility to communicate and be understood. It can be frustrating to try to share something with somebody, something important and real to you, and see in the face of another person that he doesn't care or, worse still, simply doesn't understand you. Of course, it is inevitable that this will happen from time to time, but imagine if it were always that way. Imagine if every time you tried to communicate and connect with another human being you fell short. If you never make any sense to anybody, if you never connect, you hold no value: you are truly alone. There are those who can survive as genuine outsiders, and then there are those who can't.”

“Your parents, Oskar and Mina. They are dead and gone now, Yanek, and we would grieve them if we could. But we have only one purpose now: survive. Survive at all costs, Yanek. We cannot let these monsters tear us from the pages of the world.”

“Everybody is becoming [a superhero]. In the past I've tried to say, 'Look, we are all crappy superheroes,' because personal computers and mobile phone devices are things that only Bat Man and Mr Fantastic would have owned back in the sixties. We've all got this immense power and we're still sat at home watching pornography and buying scratch cards. We're rubbish, even though we are as gods.”

“Rejections are thin 'cause they really have nothing to say other than, "Sorry, dude, you're screwed." acceptances are thick 'cause they have lots of stuff to say like, "Welcome, dude, you're not screwed, we want you.”

“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”