Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now: My Difficult 80s by Andrew Collins (Ebury Press 2004)

Ben Elton is my big favourite at the moment. He's my guiding light. My moral compass. He's mobilised all the instinctive humanitarian, left-wing feelings that have brewing up in me since leaving home and given voice to the way I feel deep down inside. I've never before been this laid bare with guilt - but good guilt, useful social guilt, practical guilt; not abstract, debilitating girlfriend -induced guilt about having a happy family or parking inconsiderately. In the space of just a few weekly stand-up routines in that crap suit, Ben has succeeded in making me feel guilty about a much broader range of stuff.
Ben Elton speaks directly to me, he speaks directly to all of us, from his pulpit on Saturday Live. I've never seen the halls coffee bar as packed as it is now is every Saturday night at ten. Standing room only. The committee don't bother hiring a video in any more and the poor old Prince Albert empties at 9.45. One week he's exposing the folly of trying to get a double seat on a train and speaking of the repressed British character, the next he's damning Benny Hill for chasing women round the park when in fact street lighting is inadequate and women are too scared to walk through parks. On occasions we've all found ourselves clapping the TV. Saturday Live makes me glad I'm back I'm back in the halls.

Dark Entries by Ian Rankin and Werther Dell'edera (Vertigo Crime 2009)

Thank You For Smoking by Christopher Buckley (Harper Perennial 1994)

The Captain snorted into his snifter. "You know, your generation of tobacco men - and women, I'm always forgetting to add 'and women' - think they have it harder than any generation who came before. You think it all began in nineteen fifty-two. Well, puh!"
puh?
"It's been going on for almost five hundred years. Does the name Rodrigo de Jerez mean anything to you?" Nick shook his head. "No, I suppose it doesn't. I suppose they don't teach history in the schools anymore, just attitude. Well, for your information, sir, Rodrigo de Jerez went ashore with Christopher Columbus. And he watched the natives 'drink smoke', as he put it, with their pipes. He brought tobacco back to the Old World with him. Sang its praises high to the frescoed ceilings. Do you know what happened to him? The Spanish Inquisition put him in jail for it. They said it was a 'devilish habit'. You think you have it bad having to deal with the Federal Tobacco Commission? How would you like to have to state your case before the Spanish Inquisition?"
"Well . . . ."
"You bet you would not. Remember that name, Rodrigo de Jerez. You're walking in his footsteps. He was the first tobacco spokesman.. I sppose he, too, found it 'challenging.'"
"Uh . . . "

From the Velvets to the Voidoids - A Pre-Punk History for a Post-Punk World by Clinton Heylin (Penguin Books 1993)

Being 'more suburban', they had something in common with other CBGBs favourites that existed largely outside the scene. The Shirts, like those other local faves the Tuff Darts, were more interested in securing a record deal than in reviving rock & roll.

Annie Golden: We were the hicks from Brooklyn, never aspiring to go across the bridge, but we had read about the Mercer Arts Centre, which had just crumbled, and the back room at Max's, and we went down to see Patti Smith at CBGBs . . . We were holed up in Brooklyn, we all had day jobs, we were rehearsing eight to ten hours into the morning, saving money for equipment. Bands in Manhattan were doing it another way. They were like artists; they were doing minimalist rock and they were starving. But we had this big light show and a big PA.

The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin (Little Brown 2007)

"The barriers were going up. Down George IV Bridge and all along Princes Street, workmen were busy putting them in place. Road repairs and building projects had been put on hold, scaffolding removed so it couldn't be taken apart and used as missiles. Mailboxes had been sealed shut and some shops boarded up. Financial institutions had been warned, staff advised not to wear formal clothing - it would make them easy targets. For a Friday evening, the town was quiet. Police vans cruised the central streets, metal grilles fixed to their windshields. More vans were parked out of sight in unlit side roads. The cops on board wore riot gear and laughed among themselves, swapping stories from previous engagements. A few veterans had seen action during the last wave of miners' strikes. Others tried to match these memories with stories of soccer battles, poll-tax demonstrations, the Newbury Bypass. They exchanged rumors about the expected size of the Italian anarchist contingent".

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (Little Brown 2007)

"It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor. You start believing that you're poor because you're stupid and ugly. And then you start believing that you're stupid and ugly because you're Indian. And because you're Indian you start believing you're destined to be poor. it's an ugly circle and there's nothing you can do about it.

"Poverty doesn't give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor".