“Grove Health Center," trilled the woman on the end of the line. She had the vocal automisation that comes to people whose job description might as well read: 'Ceaseless repetition'.”

“A funny yet interesting read, Will Self knowa his stuff and must do a lot of deep research.”

“Don't try it," he said. The mutant was reading my mind. "You, boy, you're a literary trainspotter...”

“As my voice died away I became conscious of the voice of another woman two tables away. I couldn't hear what she was saying to her set-faced male companion, but the tone was the same as my own, the exact same plangent composite of need and recrimination. I stared at them. Their faces said it all: his awful detachment, her hideous yearning. And as I looked around the cafe at couple after couple, eaching confronting one another over the marble table tops, I had the beginnings of an intimation.Perhaps all this awful mismatching, this emotional grating, these Mexican stand-offs of trust and commitment, were somehow in the air. It wasn't down to individuals: me and him, Grace and John, those two over there... It was a contagion that was getting to all of us; a germ of insecurity that had lodged in all our breasts and was now fissioning frantically, creating a domino effect as relationship after relationship collapsed in a rubble of mistrust and acrimony.”

“She began to take exercise far too late, embarking on tiny cycling tours to music festivals, or flower shows, or doing the rounds of churches – there were so many spires in her uninspiring adopted home. Three kids, one episiotomy, two continents, many phobias, lots of depressions. Old fat lady's underwear. It was all a curse upon cycling, which she'd taken up for what reason? Believe it or not, not even the bulbous seventies there were still bulbous, middle-aged women such as she, who thought that the principle of cycling meant something. They cycled and they ate in health-food restaurants like Cranks or Ceres, their cussedness aimed at appeasing the Earth Goddess herself. They almost fucking overdosed on grated carrot; while sipping fucking prune juice. They invented being environmentally-conscious, with their vegetable-buying co-operatives which gave them an excuse to put gumboots on in town.”

“I'm going to end up like one of those old weirdos who lives in a network of tunnels burrowed through trash - yet I do not fear this.”

“Well, it's like this," began Mother, "When you die you go and live in another part of London. And that's it." ~ North London Book of the Dead”