Their friendship was like a wilted bunch of flowers that she insisted on topping up with water. Why not let it die instead?

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

You've got to stop letting women slip drugs into your mouth, Dex, it's unhygienic. And dangerous. One day it'll be a cyanide capsule.

Today. This bright new day that awaits us

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

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.

Whatever happens tomorrow, we had today; and I'll always remember it