The future rose up ahead of her, a succession of empty days, each more daunting and unknowable than the one before her.

I suppose the important thing is to make some sort of difference,’ she siad. ‘You know, actually change something.’ ‘What, like “change the world”, you mean?’ ‘Not the whole entire world. Just the little bit around you.

But how can you not like music? That's the same as not liking food! Or sex!

As a novelist, I'm incredibly lucky to make a living, but that doesn't mean that I don't lie awake at four o'clock in the morning, worrying.

He has found himself more and more reliant on her at exactly the point that she has become less available to him.

You can't throw away years of your life because it makes a funny anecdote.

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.