What doesn't kill us makes us funnier.

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

I wished there was some kind of switch on my brain. That I could turn it off in the same way that I could turn off the television. Just click it off and immediately empty my mind of all these images and worrying thoughts. And simply leave a blank screen. Or if I could just remove my head and put it on the bedside table and forget about it until morning. And then attach it again when I needed it.

For all of my life it was the size of my rear that caused me the most hand-wringing, but in this nearly-50 zone it is my stomach that is the problem. It seems to have broken free from its moorings and there is no knowing how far it will roam.

Do I mind being called a chick-lit writer? Well, it's not the worst thing that could happen.

I rang my mother to thank her for giving birth to me and she said, "What choice had I? You were in there, how else were you going to get out?

I couldn’t be with people and I didn’t want to be alone. Suddenly my perspective whooshed and I was far out in space, watching the world. I could see millions and millions of people, all slotted into their lives; then I could see me—I’d lost my place in the universe. It had closed up and there was nowhere for me to be. I was more lost than I had known it was possible for any human being to be.