She could not complain about not having shoes when the person she was talking to had no legs.

Honesty. And I just really think there's a fundamental friendship that needs to exist, whether it's a lover, whether it's a sister...there's just this connection both people need to be effortlessly themselves.

There are people who dislike you because you do not dislike yourself.

That her relationship with him was like being content in a house but always sitting by the window and looking out

I was stained by failure.

The novels I love, the ones I remember, the ones I re-read, have an empathetic human quality, or 'emotional truth'. This quality is difficult to fully define, but I always recognise it when I see it: it is different from honesty and more resilient than fact, something that exists not in the kind of fiction that explains but in the kind that shows.

I am interested in challenging the mainstream ideas of what is beautiful and what is acceptable.