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.

She had reached a turning point. She no longer believed that a situation could be made better by writing a poem about it.

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

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

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.

…and you smile back and try not to think about the fact that you have nothing, absolutely nothing, to say to each other.

Being a decent human being will require effort and energy.