“Lesson for the day, kids: hangovers are real, and they are the opposite of fun.”

“My idea of a fun night was diving into a massive pile of To Be Read pile of books stacked near my dresser... I was the girl who loved everything geeky.”

“I guess I had always sort of fantasized that a guy would see me and get past the ponytail and the glasses and the giant sweatshirt to discover how insanely awesome I am, then come and whisk me off into that magical teenager fairytale where everyone else gets to prance around.”

“. . . Mrs. Lambchop sighed and shook her head. "You're at the office all day, having fun," she said. "You don't realize what I go through with the boys. They're very difficult."Kids are like that," Mr. Lambchop said. "Phases. Be patient, dear.”

“Where's my life gone? Where's it going? Looking across the grassy marshland to Flint and up the coast to Point Of Air, I start to wonder what all those poor fuckers in Wales are doing with their lives. Screwing? Sleeping in? Debating whether to take breakfast in bed to their broken fathers? Unlikely. They're probably doing what the gilded folk of Hollywood are doing, or Kowloon or Port Elizabeth. Worrying. Worrying about getting old, or about work, or about money, or about their boyfriend, mistress, lover, house, health, future. Life is shit. There is no fucking point to any of it. Not now that we've evolved past the survival stage. Maybe we used to live to hunt to kill to eat to live another day. Now we just kill time in as many sophisticated ways as possible. Pointless jobs. Pointless lives. Work. Television. Football.”

“If we cannot be contented with our current lives and possessions, then we are feeding an appetite that no amount of money will ever satiate.”

“Things were good. He had things to look forward to. That, for now, was to be his definition of living - to always have a thing to look forward to.”