"It is," he reflects glumly, "as if I travel with atmospheric low pressure gathered around my shoulders like a cloak".
"The funny thing is," he reflects, "that in the end, we became a victim of our own success.
Bettering yourself in Britain is, he reflects, like visiting the moon: "Bright and shiny when you're a long way off, cold and dark when you get there".
It is, he reflects, "the mirror image of his own existence", and the book's uncomplicated, upbeat message is that stoic industry pays off.
It was, he reflected, "undoubtedly esteemed a very ingenious performance, by the people, at the age of its construction".
'I was," he reflected, "a young man whose time coincided with the last years of peace, and so was perhaps luckier than any generation since.
"That's the way life was," he reflects.
"Sometimes the closer you are to someone, the further away you are," he reflects.
It was, he reflects, a "ghetto" familiar to fans of the TV drama The Wire.
"I know who this man was," he reflects, "but that comes from the words, the language, the verse, the characters he created".
