That is how we lived, happily and without hope. I was very young then, and I did not miss having a future because I did not know I was entitled to one.

We no longer need to show people being brave: instead, we can examine how they became brave. We can assume that they didn't start out that way. If we allow that they started out just like us, then their journey into courage becomes both more fascinating and more impressive.

Psychiatry in this place is like serving an in-flight meal in the middle of a plane crash. If I wanted to make you well, as a doctor, I should be giving you a parachute, not a cheese-and-pickle sandwich.

I think all of us are intrigued to imagine what we as individuals would become, if we were ever tested as hard as that golden generation was.

There was no quick grief for Andrew because he had been so slowly lost. First from my heart, then from my mind, and only finally from my life.

The reason why I love people, and writing about them, is because they don't always respond with hate and anger. If they did I wouldn't have a story to tell. Who wants to know about someone who was brutalised and became brutal? I'm interested in the exceptions.

If your face is swollen from the severe beatings of life, smile and pretend to be a fat man.