It's all in her walk, a cartoon swagger. Part Jayne Mansfield, part Muhammad Ali. Men never know if it's an invitation upstairs or an invitation outside.

I envied women with signature hair-dos, signature perfumes, signature sign-offs. Novelists who tell Vogue Magazine: “I can’t live without my Smythson notebook, Pomegranate Noir cologne by Jo Malone and Frette sheets”. In the grip of madness, materialism begins to look like an admirable belief system.

I would say at the moment the only person who could have played me this past year would have to be Angelina Jolie.

Your own love story? Your paramour may have had lovers before you. But no one has ever loved him the way you do. No one has ever heard music. Not the way you hear it. The songs are beautiful vampires, asleep in your iPod, coming alive at night, aglow. You can have them on your hours, yours to conduct. Music shapes us and we shape it.

A lot of the time in my recurring dreams, before I was diagnosed, iconic people would either be good or evil figures. I remember dreaming really basic stuff like trying to navigate the London underground, but then Paul Newman would be the only one who would direct me to the right trains. And I'm trying to remember who would direct me to the wrong ones.

I think a neurotic learns from their mistakes. A psychotic does not.

When I am in a relationship, I don’t wear lipstick at all. I hate the smearing, the retouching, the constant throb of phoniness as you surreptitiously check the damage in your compact between kisses. I wear lots of mascara to compensate, different colors so I don’t get bored. When I am about to break up with a guy, he has full warning because I start wearing lipstick again.