I've finally tracked down a copy of The Rules of Attraction - unfortunately not my copy where the quote was conveniently underlined I'm sure. So I've read a hundred pages of the book to further complete what I set out on my Main Page: a little extract you can find here.
It was so memorable to me, and I use it so much nowadays as my online persona, mainly because when I was reading the novel for the second time, I remember pissing myself with laughter at two particular points: this one, and the earlier one with the lovely phrase "yeah, cream in it".
The thing is, re-reading it now, it really just seems so tinged with longing, that kind of desperate sadness that I suppose I never quite appreciated about the book - though significant portions of it still make me cackle.
Still, I think I have a healthy enough sense of my own revisionism that it should go up as it had been intended - in a particular spirit that has simply been made more complex by my changed response.
