“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.”

“It is a strange paradox that while the grief of football fans(and it is real grief) is private - we each have an individual relationship with our clubs, and I think that we are secretly convinced that none of the other fans understands quite why we have been harder hit than anyone else - we are forced to mourn in public, surrounded by people whose hurt is expressed in forms different from our own.”

“I loved them, and would always love them. But there was no place where they could fit anymore, so I had nowhere to put all the things I felt. I didn't know what to do with them, and they didn't know what to do with me, and isn't that just like life?”

“I remembered what it is I like about sex: what I like about sex is that I can lose myself in it entirely. Sex, in fact, is the most absorbing activity I have discovered in adulthood. When I was a child I used to feel this way about all sorts of things—Legos, The Jungle Book, The Hardy Boys, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Saturday morning cartoons...I could forget where I was, the time of day, who I was with. Sex is the only thing I've found like that as a grown-up, give or take the odd film: books are no longer like that once you're out of your teens, and I've certainly never found it in my work. All the horrible pre-sex self-consciousness drains out of me, and I forget where I am, the time of day...and yes, I forget who I'm with, for the time being.”

“I didn't say anything. But I could have pointed out that most life-changing says happen without your expecting them. I have spent what seems like half my life expecting the worst. And it never happens. But on the day it does, it will knock me flat on my back anyway.”

“If I could have all of those things, I wouldn't mind if I touched her or not.”

“I can't tell you how good and bad I felt. Yes I can: I felt like a baked Alaska.”