Best 9 quotes of Mark Barrowcliffe on MyQuotes

Actually 'bad' doesn't do justice to my handwriting. Neither does 'handwriting.' 'Desecration of paper' about covers it.

The reason some younger women were willing to go out with my flabby, ageing self was that no one of their own age would put up with them for more than 10 minutes.

...an obsession is a way for damaged people to damage themselves more.

At the time I thought the winner in an argument was the person who put forward the most logical support for his position. Of course, this isn't true. Human history, from gardening disputes to genocide, is full of examples of people with the most decent, well-argued stance ending up with their face in the mud in front of a naked display of power.

I was aware that he was laughing at me, but I told myself I didn't care what other people thought and would dress how I liked. Of course, like many self-consciously wacky people, I was in fact paralyzed by fear of the opinions of others and made the effort to appear as the maddest of the mad headbangers just in case anyone had the slightest lingering doubt as to the depth of my devotion. In fact, I think my disguise felt so fragile I couldn't allow it a single crack. If I did it might fall to bits and leave the real me shrivelling under the evaluating gaze of my peer group.

I was petrified of making a mistake—head-banging to the wrong song or not hard enough, or thinking a guitar solo was over when it wasn't. A rule of thumb is that if the guitar solo is by Led Zep or Lynyrd Skynyrd then it's not over. Ever.

This, since junior school, had been virtually my only experience of women—as fantasy figures. Reading about women in fantasy novels had set me an even more unrealistic point of view. The Lord of the Rings doesn't help, with its sexless visions of elf maidens who may as well be speaking paintings, and neither does other fantasy literature, where women seem to exist solely to be rescued or slept with. The men they want are sorcerer-kings, doomed warriors or deadly assassins. I think the idea that women might fancy good-looking, well-adjusted men who are nice to them is too much for the average fantasy-head to bear.

Weirdly, D&D didn't encourage my leanings towards trying magic of my own at all. In fact, it frustrated them. Even the most pompous and ambitious historical magicians, from the Zaroastrian Magi through John Dee, Francis Barrett and Aleister Crowley, never claimed to be able to throw fireballs or lightning bolts like D&D wizards can. So D&D was never going to feed the fantasies of practising magic in the real world. That is all about gaining secret knowledge, a higher level of perception or inflicting misfortune or a boon on someone rather than causing a poisonous cloud of vapor to pour from your fingers (Cloudkill, deadly to creatures with less than 5 hit dice, for those who are interested). The game, as we played it, just doesn't support the occult idea of magic. In fact, it might even be argued that, by giving such a powerful prop to my imagination, D&D stopped me from going deeper into the occult in real life. I certainly had all the qualifications—bullied power-hungry twerp with no discernable skill in conventional fields and no immediate hope of a girlfriend who wasn't mentally ill. It's amazing I'm not out sacrificing goats to this day.

With the help of fanzines and close attention to the text of the game you can actually learn to speak Tsolyanu while wondering why the school still makes you learn French–it's not like you're going to use it.