“Fat Charlie blew his nose. "I never knew I had a brother," he said."I did," said Spider. "I always meant to look you up, but I got distracted. You know how it is.""Not really.""Things came up.""What kind of things?""Things. They came up. That's what things do. They come up. I can't be expected to keep track of them all.""Well, give me a f'rinstance."Spider drank more wine. "Okay. The last time I decided that you and I should meet, I, well, I spent days planning it. Wanted it to go perfectly. I had to choose my wardrobe. Then I had to decide what I'd say to you when we met. I knew that the meeting of two brothers, well, it's the subject of epics, isn't it? I decided that the only way to treat it with the appropriate gravity would be to do it in verse. But what kind of verse? Am I going to rap it? Declaim it? I mean, I'm not going to greet you with a limerick. So. It had to be something dark, something powerful, rhythmic, epic. And then I had it. The perfect line: Blood calls to blood like sirens in the night. It says so much. I knew I'd be able to get everything in there - people dying in alleys, sweat and nightmares, the power of free spirits uncrushable. Everything was going to be there. And then I had to come up with a second line, and the whole thing completely fell apart. The best I could come up with was Tum-tumpty-tumpty-tumpty got a fright."Fat Charlie blinked. "Who exactly is Tum-tumpty-tumpty-tumpty?""It's not anybody. It's just there to show you where the words ought to be. But I never really got any futher on it than that, and I couldn't turn up with just a first line, some tumpties and three words of an epic poem, could I? That would have been disrespecting you.""Well....""Exactly. So I went to Hawaii for the week instead. Like I said, something came up.”

“Come with me," Reyn said. "I want to show you something." Frankly, I had expected something more original. "Really?" I asked, "That's it? That's what you came up with?”

“We both had done the math. Kelly added it all up and... knew she had to let me go. I added it up, and knew that I had... lost her. 'cos I was never gonna get off that island. I was gonna die there, totally alone. I was gonna get sick, or get injured or something. The only choice I had, the only thing I could control was when, and how, and where it was going to happen. So... I made a rope and I went up to the summit, to hang myself. I had to test it, you know? Of course. You know me. And the weight of the log, snapped the limb of the tree, so I-I - , I couldn't even kill myself the way I wanted to. I had power over *nothing*. And that's when this feeling came over me like a warm blanket. I knew, somehow, that I had to stay alive. Somehow. I had to keep breathing. Even though there was no reason to hope. And all my logic said that I would never see this place again. So that's what I did. I stayed alive. I kept breathing. And one day my logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in, and gave me a sail. And now, here I am. I'm back. In Memphis, talking to you. I have ice in my glass... And I've lost her all over again. I'm so sad that I don't have Kelly. But I'm so grateful that she was with me on that island. And I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?”

“You know that excuse... it's not you it's me? I say that a lot, when I break up with someone, but I don't really mean it when I do. I'm not the reason my relationships end but neither are the women. It's not me and it's not them--it's that we never had a we. There was no us. It's hard to say what makes two people have that, because it's something you can't put into words. It's a feeling, I know it's only a movie, but I want the feeling that Lloyd had. He didn't just want Diane, he needed her, so he did everything in his power to get her back.”

“I thought about suicide all the time, but it seemed toomuch effort, swallowing all those pills or jumping off things. If I'd lived out in the country I would have found a quiet stretch of railway track, and lain on it, fallen asleep, so that I would never have known when my last moment came. In London, the minimum tube fare had gone up so much that even to get near the line cost a fortune. Suicide seemed an extravagance I couldn't afford. People never leave you alone, either; I knew that if I'd tried to lie down on the line, any number of commuters would have pulled me off again, so that I didn't delay their train. There must have been murderers out there who wanted to kill, with no way of finding those who wanted to be dead. If there had been some way of contacting them, a date-with-death line, I would have called them to set up a meeting. The current ways of death seemed too haphazard; it was all left up to chance. Had Chance come up, tapped me on the shoulder, said "Oi, you - long black tunnel, white light, off you go," I wouldn't have complained. It was like having frostbite all over - feeling numb and in pain at the same time.”

“looks like i'm gonna do everything myselfmaybe i could use some help but hell,you want something done right you gotta do it yourselfmaybe life is up and down but my life's been (what?)till now i crawled up your butt somehow and that'swhen things got turned around i used to be alivenow i feel pathetic and now i get it what's done is done you just leave it aloneand don't regret it but sometimes,some things turn into dumb thingsand that's when you put your foot down.why did i have to go and meet somebody like you (like you)why did you have to go and hurt somebody like me (like me)how could you do somebody like that?(like that) hope you know that i'm never coming back (never coming back)”