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

I identified with Pip from 'Great Expectations,' especially when I was younger; I had the same kind of gaucheness and uncertainty.

You start out wanting to change the world through language, and end up thinking it's enough to tell a few good jokes.

For the best part of my childhood I visited the local library three or four times a week, hunching in the stacks on a foam rubber stool and devouring children's fiction, classics, salacious thrillers, horror and sci-fi, books about cinema and origami and natural history, to the point where my parents encouraged me to read a little less.

Happyish. Well, happyish isn't so bad.' 'It's the most we can hope for.

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

All his words and actions would now be fit for his daughter’s ears and eyes. Life would be lived as if under [her] constant scrutiny. He would never do anything that might cause her pain or anxiety or embarrassment and there would be nothing, absolutely nothing in his life to be ashamed of anymore.