49 Quotes by Joe Dunthorne

My mother tells me I do not chew my food enough; she says I am making it harder for my body to get the essential nutrients it needs. If she were here, I would remind her that I am eating a blueberry Pop-Tart.

Anger does not come easy to me. It is something I have to encourage, like a greyhound in second place.

I would never say snog. I would say osculate." She looks at me as if to say: why do you exist?

For my last birthday, Dad bought me a pocket-sized Collins English Dictionary. It would only fit in a pocket that had been specially designed.

Are we making a bomb?" "This is a trust exercise, like in drama," she says. "Are we making a bomb as a trust exercise?

After that, we had a short conversation about how your body can sometimes seem totally separate. She said her body can feel like a distant bureaucracy controlled by telegrams from her brain, and I said my body is sometimes like that of Mario Mario, being controlled with a Nintendo joypad. Mario's surname is Mario.

Thursday morning. I usually let my Mum wake me up but today I have set my alarm for seven. Even from under my duvet, I can hear it bleating on the other side of my room. I hid it inside my plastic crate for faulty joysticks so that I would have to get out of bed, walk across the room, yank it out of the box by its lead and, only then, jab the snooze button. This was a tactical manoeuvre by my previous self. He can be very cruel.

I was camped at the same site as her: Broughton Farm. She came over to my tent and showed me her blisters. She asked me whether I knew the reason why a blister can keep on producing fluid ad infinitum. I said that I had always wondered the same thing about mucus. One of the reasons we are together is because we have similar interests.

I tell myself not to feel sexually threatened. I am of no special interest; he could just as easily be angling for the printer.