Poppies bleed petals of sheer excess. You and I, this sweet battle ground.

My father was an engineer - he wasn't literary, not a writer or a journalist, but he was one of the world's great readers. Every two weeks, he'd take me to our local branch library and pull books off the shelf for me, stacking them up in my arms - 'Have you read this? And this? And this?"

...You know the mistrust of heights is the mistrust of self, you don't know whether you're going to jump.

A couple of times, I could have turned a trick. But I didn't want to start. I knew how it would play. When you started thinking it was easy, you were forgetting what it cost.

It's not that he was going nowhere, it's that he'd already arrived.

How can I shed tears for a man I should never have allowed to touch me in any way?

A cliché is like a coin that has been handled too much. Once language has been overly handled, it no longer leaves a clear imprint.