“It hadn’t always been this way, that’s a cliché, but it is a cliché for a reason. It’s not like anyone starts a relationship with nothing to say to the other person. No-one wants to feel like a complete stranger and live together because it’s easier than trying to remember who owns the copy of Almost Famous – which was mine by the way.”

“I loved her; I didn’t know how to say it without breaking down the autobot façade she saw before her and revealing the ugly and scarred wreck that lived within my skin. So I played with the radio instead.”

“Propping up a seat at the bar we devour chicken wings like life does dreams”

“Wriggling around, two fingers deep in my back end like some teenage boy unsure what he should be tugging at inside his girlfriend’s nether region I wrestled a fifty free.”

“With the windows in his top of the range Audi firmly in place we slowly baked ourselves and chatted over why my hatred of golf was wrong, what made a good antihero and why Paul McCartney should just fuck off.”

“Carve out the time. Notice I do not say find the time. That is an absurd and dangerous phrase. Time is never lying around waiting for us to find her. She is elusive. She wants you to sculpt her like clay, to mold her into exactly the form you desire your days to take. If you refuse to do that, if you spend your mornings worrying and your afternoons catering to others, always hoping there will be a few minutes left for you, time will play you like a sucker, making you run harder and faster with each passing week. Time wants you to realize that she is the most precious and irreducible fact in your live. Make her into what you will”

“After that there was nothing left to say as nothing gets on my nerves more than someone repeating the same phrase twice. I think it’s something people have picked up from television, this emotional stutter. Rather than say something interesting once, they repeat a cliché and hope for the same effect”