We spent all those years talking about stuff we had in common, and the last few months noticing all the ways we were different and it broke both of our hearts.

Most people have a rope that ties them to someone, and that rope can be short or it can be long. (Be long. Belong. Get it?) You don't know how long, though. It's not your choice.

I used to think--and given the way we ended up, maybe I still do--that all relationships need the kind of violent shove that a crush brings, just to get you started and to push you over the humps. And then, when the energy from that shove has gone and you come to something approaching a halt, you have to look around and see what you've got. It could be something completely different, it could be something roughly the same, but gentler and calmer, or it could be nothing at all.

I burst into tears and I cry and cry until it feels as though it is not salt and water being squeezed from my eyes, but blood.

I never really recovered from the shock of discovering that women do what we do; they save their best pairs for the nights when they are going to sleep with somebody. When you live with a woman, these faded, shrunken tatty scraps suddenly appear on radiators all over the house; your lascivious schoolboy dreams of adulthood as a time when you are surrounded by exotic lingerie for ever and ever amen...those dreams crumble to dust.

I'm still not a very good white wine, but I'm drinkable - you could put me in a punch, anyway.

You had to live in your own bubble. You couldn't force your way into someone else's, because then it wouldn't be a bubble any more.