I don't like this idea of division: that if you're a clever woman then you've got to be a particular way. Because men don't. Men please themselves.

As you know, I don't believe in fear, just an invention by men so they get all the money and good jobs.

smarter than me. But here's the thing my life did get better. I made a decision to let go of my dreams, because they were killing me, and I stopped asking the impossible of myself. I changed my attitude and decided to focus on what I had rather than what i didn't have.

I suppose I wanted to have my cake and eat it. But then again, what were you going to do with your cake if not eat it? Frame it? Use it as a sachet in your underwear drawer?

People get sick and sometimes they get better and sometimes they don't. And it doesn't matter if the sickness is cancer or if it's depression. Sometimes the drugs work and sometimes they don't. Sometimes the drugs work for a while and then they stop. Sometimes the alternative stuff works and sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes you wonder if no outside interference makes any difference at all; if an illness is like a storm, if it simply has to run its course and, at the end of it, depending on how robust you are, you will be alive. Or you will be dead.

My mother is the best storyteller. And her mother was too.

Relationship gurus always said that an attraction based on friendship and mutual respect was far more likely to stay the course - and the bastards were right.