Somewhere along the line I'd lost the will not to eat.

At the time, I didn't have the insight to wonder at the transient nature of despair, but now that I'm older I've seen how little it takes to turn a person's life around for better or worse. An event will do, or an Idea. Another person. An idea of a person.

After all this time, I know exactly where I belong.

I love you. I'm madly in love with you. Well, madly obviously, given I'm mad as a mudlark. But you saved my life. I'd be dead without you. And you're so good to me. And you love me too. How lucky is that? Amazing! Amazingly lucky. I can't live without you. You're my lucky charm." She felt a sudden desire to kill Justin's well-meaning friend.

Self-knowledge is essential not only to writing, but to doing almost anything really well. It allows you to work through from a deep place - from the deep, dark corners of your subconscious mind.

I didn't seem to have that effect on anyone but it would have been a waste for both of us to be saints.

If you have the patience to wait and watch, history will reshape truth (weakest of all forces, and weightless) in the image of opinion. What really happened will cease to matter and, eventually, cease to exist.