"I wanted to make my life short, and I was at a party in Toppers' Hose, and the coincidence was too much. It was like a message from God. OK, it was disappointing that all God had to say to me was, like, Jump off a roof, but I didn't blame him. What else was he supposed to tell me?"

"Indeed, there is a moment on the first CD — the electrifying opening to "I Got Loaded," which sounds like an R&B standard but isn’t — when you might find yourself asking whether anyone who has ever been smitten by pop music can fail to have his heart stopped by the chords, the swing, and, once again, Steve Berlin’s wonderfully greasy sax."

"And another way of explaining it is that shit happens, and there's no space too small, too dark and airless and fucking hopeless, for people to crawl into."

"I couldn't get the mood back; it was as if one of the kids had woken up just as Cindy and I were starting to make love. I hadn't changed my mind, and I still knew that I'd have to do it sometime. It's just that I knew I wasn't going to be able to do it in the next five minutes."

"I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it."

"Self-pity is an ignoble emotion, but we all feel it, and the orthodox critical line that it represents some kind of artistic flaw is dubious, a form of emotional correctness."

"By the early seventies I had become an Englishman — that is to say, I hated England just as much as half my compatriots seemed to do."

"And after tea, we play Junior Scrabble. We are the ideal nuclear family. We eat together, we play improving board games instead of watching television, we smile alot. I fear that at any moment I may kill somebody."

"Each day was a bad day, but he survived by kidding himself that each day was somehow unconnected to the day before."

"What if a sense of humour is like hair — something a lot of man lose as they get older?"

"I’ve been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, and, frankly, I think my guts have shit for brains."

"Where's the superficial? I was, and therefore am, dim, gloomy, a drag, unfashionable, unfanciable, and awkward. This doesn't seem like superficial to me. These aren't flesh wounds. These are life-threatening thrusts into the internal organs."

"Then I lost it. Kinda lost it all, you know. Faith, dignity, about fifteen pounds."

"Single mothers — bright, attractive, available women, thousands of them all over London — they were the best invention Will had ever heard of."

"There had been times when he knew, somewhere in him, that he would get used to it, whatever it was, because he had learnt that some hard things became softer after a very little while."

"These feelings were exactly what he had been so afraid of, and this was why he had been so sure that falling in love was rubbish, and, surprise surprise, it was rubbish, and ... and it was too late."

"As I get older, the tyranny that football exerts over my life, and therefore over the lives of the people around me, is less reasonable and less attractive."

"I'm sorry, but there's no disturbed mental balance here, my friend. I'd say he got it just right. Bad thing upon bad thing upon bad thing... Surely that's fair enough? Surely the coroner's report should read, "He took his own life after sober and careful contemplation of the fucking shambles it had become.""

"But I'd felt as if I'd pissed my life away in the same way that you can piss money away. I'd had a life, full of kids and wives and jobs and all the usual stuff, and I'd somehow managed to mislay it. No, you see, that's not right. I knew where my life was, just as you know where the money goes when you piss it away. I hadn't mislaid it at all. I'd spent it."

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true."

"Sometimes I'm happy sometimes I'm blue my disposition depends on you."

"Swanee! How I love you, how I love you, My dear ol' Swanee! I'd give the world to be Among the folks in D-I-X-I-E"

"Picture you upon my knee, Just tea for two and two for tea"

"Don't waste the breath to save your face, When you have done your best, And even more is asked of you, Let fate decide the rest."

"But never give your love, my friend, Unto a foolish heart"

"There are times when you get hit upon, Try hard but you cannot give. Other times you'd gladly part, With what you need to live"

"The storyteller makes no choice, soon you will not hear his voice, his job is to shed light, and not to master"

"While you were gone, these spaces filled with darkness. The obvious was hidden. With nothing to believe in. The compass always points to Terrapin."

"Crippled but free, I was blind all the time I was learning to see."

"In another time's forgotten space, your eyes looked through your mother's face, Wildflower seed on the sand and stone, may the four winds blow you safely home. Roll away ... the dew"

"Let my inspiration flow, in token lines suggesting rhythm, that will not forsake me, till my tale is told and done"

"Inspiration, move me brightly, light the song with sense and color, hold away despair"

"Ain't nobody messin' with you but you"

"I like your smile but I ain't your type, Don't shake the tree when the fruit ain't ripe"

"Sometimes we live no particular way but our own"

"Once in a while, you get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if you look at it right."

"It seems like all this life was just a dream"

"Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world, but the heart has its beaches, its homeland, and thoughts of its own. Wake now, discover that you are the song that the morning brings, but the heart has its seasons its evenings, and songs of its own"

"I won't slave for beggar's pay, likewise gold and jewels, but I would slave to learn the way, to sink your ship of fools."

"There are things you can replace, and others you cannot. The time has come to weigh those things, this space is getting hot."

"Let there be songs to fill the air."

"You who choose to lead must follow, But if you fall, you fall alone, If you should stand then who's to guide you? If I knew the way I would take you home"

"Lovers come and go, the river roll, roll, roll."

"Trouble with you is The trouble with me Got two good eyes But you still don't see Come round the bend You know it's the end The fireman screams and The engine just gleams"

"Trouble ahead. A lady in red. Take my advice. You'd be better off dead!"

"There is a road, no simple highway, between the dawn and the dark of night. And if you go, no one may follow. That path is for your steps alone."