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confidence of a self-help Joan of Arc. ‘If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don’t give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it.

she shut the door and washed her hands and stared at the water spiral down the plughole the wrong way.

Sometimes if we fill that lack with something else the original want disappears entirely.

That, she supposed, was the basis of depression as well as the difference between fear and despair. Fear was when you wandered into a cellar and worried that the door would close shut. Despair was when the door closed and locked behind you.

more precisely: she imagined she was grateful, because he was lovely, and there were so many moments of joy and laughter and love.

‘We only know what we perceive. Everything we experience is ultimately just our perception of it. “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”’

She saw that Hugo’s watch was of the analogue variety. ‘Try it. You just can’t. Minds can’t see what they can’t handle.’

It seems that you have spent all your life saying things that you aren’t really thinking. This is one of your barriers.’ ‘Barriers?’ ‘Yes. You have a lot of them. They stop you from seeing the truth.’ ‘About what?’ ‘About yourself.

It was interesting, she mused to herself, how life sometimes simply gave you a whole new perspective by waiting around long enough for you to see it.