We listened to them, but it was clear they'd received too much therapy to know the truth.

I wanted to be an actor. My parents were not too keen on that.

Regret, already sogging me down, burst its dam. It seeped into my legs, it pooled in my heart.

She understood that her heart operated on its own instructions, that she had no control over it or, indeed, anything else.

When I'm creating a character, it's a little bit like what my theater teachers used to tell me about Stanislavsky, like if you're using sense memory to do a scene - if you have to cry in a scene, you try to remember something in your life that made you cry and you use that in order to get the tears.

Emotions, in my experience aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." ... I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life.

People don't save other people. People save themselves.