But all three of them had had to lose things in order to gain other things. Will had lost his shell and his cool and his distance, and he felt scared and vulnerable, but he got to be with Rachel; and Fiona had lost a big chunk of Marcus, and she got to stay away from the casualty ward; and Marcus had lost himself, and got to walk home from school with his shoes on.

We're here for such a short amount of time. Why do we spend any of it building sandcastles?

We can't be as good as we'd want to, so the question then becomes, how do we cope with our own badness?

I suddenly had a little epiphany: all the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal.

What harm has he ever done to you?' 'You know what harm he's done me. He offended me with his terrible taste.

When you get older, it feels like happy memories and sad memories are pretty much the same thing. It is all just emotion in the end. And any of it can make you weep.

Over the last couple of years, the photos of me when I was a kid... well, they've started to give me a little pang or something - not unhappiness, exactly, but some kind of quiet, deep regret... I keep wanting to apologize to the little guy: "I'm sorry, I've let you down. I was the person who was supposed to look after you, but I blew it: I made wrong decisions at bad times, and I turned you into me.