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

I want my best friend back, she thinks, because without him nothing is good and nothing is right.

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 love that sound,' he mumbled into her hair. 'Blackbirds at dawn.' 'I hate it. Makes me think I've done something I'll regret.

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

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.

Maybe we've grown out of each other.