...and once again Dexter is struck by how easy conversation can be when no-one is in their right mind

Emma was a shocking driver, simultaneously sloppy and petrified, and for the first fifty miles had been absent-mindedly driving with her spectacles on top of her contact lenses so that other traffic loomed menacingly out of nowhere like alien space cruisers.

Find the thing you love, and do it with all your heart, to the absolute best of your ability, no matter what people say.

Whatever happens tomorrow, we had today; and I'll always remember it

Failure and unhappiness is easier because you can make a joke out of it.

She drinks pints of coffee and writes little observations and ideas for stories with her best fountain pen on the linen-white pages of expensive notebooks. Sometimes, when it's going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationery.

In the future, I'll be braver, she told herself. In the future, I will always speak my mind, eloquently, passionately.