Nick Hornby

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Wheres the superficial? I was, and therefore am, dim, gloomy, a drag, unfashionable, unfanciable, and awkward. This doesnt seem like superficial to me. These arent flesh wounds. These are life-threatening thrusts into the internal organs."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"Im sorry, but theres no disturbed mental balance here, my friend. Id say he got it just right. Bad thing upon bad thing upon bad thing... Surely thats fair enough? Surely the coroners report should read, "He took his own life after sober and careful contemplation of the fucking shambles it had become."