“This is...""You completely forgot what day it is, didn't you?""Eh?""It's your birthday!!""Huh... It is? Oh!""Idiot!”

“Oh, if I had been loved at the age of seventeen, what an idiot I would be today. Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon, it can completely ruin your constitution.”

“And now," he continued, speaking to Milo, "where were you on the night of July 27?" "What does that have to do with it?" asked Milo."It's my birthday, that's what," said the policeman as he entered "Forgot my birthday" in his little book. "Boys always forget other people's birthdays.”

“It's hard to take someone seriously when they leave you a note saying, 'Your ugly.' My ugly what? The idiot didn't even know the difference between your and you're.”

“Tobin turned to Angie. "I'm such an idiot. Why didn't you remind me?"She smiled drowsily. "That you're an idiot? Okay: you're an idiot.""Oh that's great, thanks," he said. She giggled.”

“For Mum, life was fundamentally hell. You went blind, you got raped, people forgot your birthday, Nixon got elected, your husband fled with a blonde from Beckenham, and then you got old, you couldn't walk and you died.”