I've always had this deep-down conviction that I'm not like everybody else, and there's an amazingly exciting new life waiting for me just around the corner.

I'm lying. I don't just need someone like you. I need you.

I chose to publish the first 'Shopaholic' book under a pseudonym because I wanted it to be judged on its own merits.

For years now I've kind of operated under an informal shopping cycle. A bit like a farmer's crop rotation system. Except, instead of wheat, maize, barley, and fallow, mine pretty much goes clothes, makeup shoes, and clothes (I don't bother with fallow). Shopping is actually very similar to farming a field. You can't keep buying the same thing, you have to have a bit of variety. Otherwise you get bored and stop enjoying yourself.

We're playing Scrabble. It's a nightmare." "Scrabble?" He sounds surprised. "Scrabble's great." "Not when you're playing with a family of geniuses, it's not. They all put words like 'iridiums'. And I put 'pig'.

You're so narrow-minded! You live in the same village you grew up in, you run the family business, you're buying a nursery down the road... you're practically still in the womb. So before you lecture me on the way to live my life, try living one of your own, OK?

There's genuine pain in Eric's eyes. And I feel a stab of guilt. But you can't stay with people because of guilt.