“He glanced around the reading room and closed his eyes, trying to keep hold of the past for a minute longer, a fattening and hungover middle-aged historian in a black corduroy suit.”

“Does a name stick because it suits a man or does the man, unconsciously, evolve into his name?”

“... he tried to visualise her apartment, but he couldn't do it, he didn't know enough about her.”

“Kelso's hangover had gone, to be replaced by that familiar phase of post-alcoholic euphoria - always in the past, his most productive time of day - a feeling that alone was enough to make getting drunk worthwhile.”

“His scars and his tattoos were the medals of his lifetime. He was proud to wear them.”

“He felt more human with his boots on. A man can face the world with something on his feet.”

“You can't make sense of the present unless a part of you lives in the past.”