All young people worry about things, it's a natural and inevitable part of growing up, and at the age of sixteen my greatest anxiety in life was that I'd never again achieve anything as good, or pure, or noble, or true, as my O-level results.

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

A joke was not a single-use item but something you brought out again and again until it fell apart in your hand like a cheap umbrella.

Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance

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

I read a lot of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I love 'Tender is the Night,' and its atmosphere of doomed romance. He was one of the greatest prose stylists, with a wonderfully clear but lyrical quality.

She made a firm resolution, one of the resolutions she was making almost daily these days. No more sleepovers, no more writing poetry, no more wasting time. Time to tidy up your life. Time to start again.