Dexter, I love you so much. So, so much, and I probably always will. I just don't like you anymore. I'm sorry.

Alice doesn't seem to mind because she's laughing too, and biting her lip, all doe-eyed, and tossing her freshly washed hair, and Norton tosses his lovely, glossy hair back, and she tosses her hair in return, and he tosses his, and she tosses hers, and it;s like some mating ritual on a wildlife program.

Time to tidy up your life. Time to start again.

And then she frowned, and shook her head, then put her arms around him once more, pressing her face into his shoulder, making a noise that sounded almost like rage. 'What's up?' he asked. 'Nothing. Oh, nothing. Just...' She looked up at him. 'I thought I'd finally got rid of you.' 'I don't think you can.' he said

A joke was not a single-use item but something you brought out again and again until it fell apart in your hand like a cheap umbrella.

Welcome to the graveyard of ambition.

She used to pride herself on her refusal to see two sides of an argument, but increasingly she accepts that issues are more ambiguous and complicated than she once thought.