It's not like you take the right turning and you get everlasting happiness and you take the wrong one and your life's a disaster. In real life it's often impossible to tell which decision is the one you should make because what you stand to gain and what you stand to lose are sometimes-often-neck and neck.

Although will never love anyone again, don't want to become bitter. Or creative.

I used to feel defensive when people would say, 'Yes, but your books have happy endings', as if that made them worthless, or unrealistic. Some people do get happy endings, even if it's only for a while. I would rather never be published again than write a downbeat ending.

I am different when my nails are done. I am more dynamic. I gesticulate more, I am better at scaring my staff. I can indicate impatience by drumming on tabletops and I can wrap up a meeting with a few choice clatters.

It was only when the salt water of my tears ran into my cuts and made them sting that I discovered I was crying.

Besides, I'd seen a really nice pair of shoes yesterday in the mall and I wanted them for my own. I can't describe the feeling of immediate familiarity that rushed between us. The moment I clapped eyes on them I felt like I already owned them. I could only suppose that we were together in a former life. That they were my shoes when I was a serving maid in medieval Britain or when I was a princess in ancient Egypt. Or perhaps they were the princess and I was the shoes. Who's to know? Either way I knew that we were meant to be together.

Love is blind, there was no doubt about it. In Tara's case it was also deaf, dumb, dyslexic, had a bad hip and the beginnings of Alzheimer's