If you're my friend I should be able to talk to you but I can't, and if I can't talk to you, well, what is the point of you? Of us?

For his thirtieth birthday he had filled a whole night-club off Regent Street; people had been queuing on the pavement to get in. The SIM card of his mobile phone in his pocket was overflowing with telephone numbers of all the hundreds of people he had met in the last ten years, and yet the only person he had ever wanted to talk to in all that time was standing now in the very next room.

The city had defeated her, just like they said it would. Like some overcrowded party, no one had noticed her arrival, and would notice if she left.

I am not up to this. I am not capable. I thought I would be, but I'm not. Some part of me is missing, and I cannot do this.

I'm trying to be inspiring! I'm trying to lift your grubby soul for the great adventure that lies ahead of you!

But at the best of times she feels like a character in a Muriel Spark novel — independent, bookish, sharp-minded, secretly romantic.

No matter how predictable, banal and listless the rest of my life might be, you can guarantee that there'll always be something interesting going on with my skin.