This was her life. Not the life she had once dreamed of, not a life her younger self would ever have imagined or desired, but the life she was living, with all its complexities. This was her life, built with care and attention, and it was good.

There was something not quite right about her eagerness, an eerie kind of voyeurism in her need for bad news.

Either things grow and change or they die.

They turned a distracted gaze on the world, wide-eyed, somehow, and questioning.

It wasn't right. He knew that, but it was like falling: once you started you couldn't stop until something stopped you.

Its impossible to control the reception of your work - the only thing you can control is the experience of writing itself, and the work you create.

Lately, the world felt fragile, like a blown egg, as if it might shatter beneath a careless touch.