If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? And if a woman who’s wholly alone occasionally talks to a pot plant, is she certifiable?
No matter; I didn’t require
I’m not lonely, Mummy, I said, protesting. I’m fine on my own. I’ve always been fine on my own.
I took one of my hands in the other, tried to imagine what it would feel like if it was another person's hand holding mine. There have been times where I felt that I might die of loneliness.
Time only blunts the pain of loss. It doesn't erase it.
I realized what I felt . . . happy. It was such a strange, unusual feeling—light, calm, as though I’d swallowed sunshine.
All of the people in the room seemed to take so much for granted: that they would be invited to social events, that they would have friends and family to talk to, that they would fall in love, be love...
It is incomprehensible to me now that I could ever have thought that anyone would love this ambulant bag of blood and bones.
I felt like a newly laid egg, all swishy and gloopy inside, and so fragile that the slightest pressure could break me.
Libraries are life-enhancing palaces of wonder
Your voice changes when you’re smiling, it alters the sound somehow.
Was this how it worked, then, successful social integration? Was it really that simple? Wear some lipstick, go to the hairdressers and alternate the clothes you wear? Someone ought to write a book, or...
Three words, Ignis aurum probat. Fire tests gold. The rest of the phrase: . . . and adversity tests the brave.
I understood that assisted conception was the antithesis of careless, spontaneous or unplanned parenthood, that it was the most deliberate of decisions, undertaken only by women who were serious and d...
I had to google mofo and must confess to being slightly alarmed by the result.
You can't protect other people, however hard you try.
What, after all, is the point of eating out if you have to clear up yourself? You might as well have stayed at home.
It fell open at a pivotal scene, the one where Jane meets Mr. Rochester for the first time, startling his horse in the woods and causing him to fall. Pilot is there too, the handsome, soulful-eyed hou...
If I’m ever unsure as to the correct course of action, I’ll think, What would a ferret do?
I'd tried to cope alone for far too long, and it hadn't done me any good at all. Sometimes you simply needed someone kind to sit with you while you dealt with things.