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

Occasionally, very occasionally, say at four o’clock in the afternoon on a wet Sunday, she feels panic-stricken and almost breathless with loneliness. Once or twice she has been known to pick up the phone to check that it isn’t broken. Sometimes she thinks how nice it would be to be woken by a call in the night: ‘get in a taxi now’ or ‘I need to see you, we need to talk’. But at the best of times she feels like a character in a Muriel Spark novel – independent, bookish, sharp-minded, secretly romantic.

…surprised all over again at how very comforting very bad food can be.

Well, I don't think Hollywood's a dirty word at all, I love a lot of Hollywood films.

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

Most of the books and films I love walk a knife edge between romance and cynicism, and I wanted 'One Day' to stay on that line. I wanted it to be moving, but without being manipulative.

And it was at moments like this that she had to remind herself that she was in love with him, or had once been in love with him, a long time ago.