Sarra Manning

“So you don’t fancy meeting up again?’ Max persisted, though Neve didn’t know why, because she thought she’d made her position perfectly clear. ‘Swap war stories?’‘I don’t have any war stories,’ Neve said, and in that moment she felt that she never would. That every night would be spent creeping round her flat in her socks with the telly turned down so low that she could barely hear it, so in the end she’d have no other option but to escape into the pages of books where there were other girls falling in and out of love but not her. Never her. She stared down at the scuffed toes of her faux Ugg boots in sudden and tired defeat.‘If you don’t have any war stories, then at least you don’t have any war wounds,’ Max said, so quietly that Neve had to strain her ears to catch his words. ‘Take my number.”

“She was so fed up with unrequited love and platonic love and all the other kinds of love that weren’t passionate, romantic, can’t-live-without-you, I-have-to-have-you-right-now, the-beat-of-your-heart-matches-the-beat-of-mine love.”

“. . . Do you want to share a black cab?’Black cabs were an extravagance that Neve couldn’t afford, not this far away from payday, but that wasn’t the reason why she declined. ‘No, thank you. I’m perfectly all right with catching the tube.’‘OK, tube it is,’ Max agreed, because he was quite obviously emotionally tone deaf and couldn’t sense the huge ‘kindly bugger off’ vibes that Neve was sure she was emitting.”

“You took out a book on blow-job technique from the British Library? They shouldn't have books like that in there!”

“I suppose the things that you always take for granted, that you don't even notice, are what you miss the most.”

“Then what he said and how he said it won't be important any more. What will be important are all the things you never got to say.”

“I guess they're called moments because they don't last very long.”

“But Neve, you can’t start a book and leave it halfway through,’ he’d said implacably. ‘It’s almost as bad as turning down the corner of the page, instead of using a bookmark.”

“Having a relationship and not even a sexual one is so straight, it's practically perverted.”

“If Madonna loves me, then you will too.”

“But really it says everything that’s wrong about the publishing industry, that a quarter of a million people bought and read a sex and shopping novel that wasn’t even written by one of those footballer girlfriends, and yet most of the shortlisted titles on the Orange Prize, which is an award for women writers, don’t even sell ten thousand copies. It’s just not right.”

“We're broken. It's like we have all these jagged edges that scare other people off, but when we're with each other, our jagged edges fit together and we're almost whole.”

“What you look like is just one part of who you are - but it's not all you are.”

“No one gets through life scot-free. Shit happens. I's how you deal with it that shapes you, not the actual event itself.”

“I smile. I smile all the time, but you're just not around to see it these days".”

“I went out with Veronique to take my mind of you, and when I'm with you I don't feel like I'm on a rebound, I feel like I've come home. It's like my world is just different combinations of black and white, but when you're around everything goes Technicolor. You're still the coolest girl I know".”

“The thing about love was that it caught you unawares, turned up in the most unexpected places, even when you weren't looking for it.”

“That was the worst thing about having a relationship with someone, even a pretend relationship. You opened up, let someone in, and when it was over, they had all the ammunition they needed to completely destroy you.”

“Never shield your oddness, but wear your oddness as a shield.”

“What she lacks in poetry she makes up for in venom”

“I'd always thought that my awkwardness was a thin veil disguising the real me. The me that was funny and could write songs that touched people. The me that would one day find some beautiful, intelligent boy who'd recognize me as his soul mate. The me who was secretly pretty and stylish if only someone would lift the veil and see. But I was beginning to suspect that underneath the awkwardness there was just more awkwardness and not much else. And that would explain why I stood in a room full of people and felt like the loneliest girl in the world.”

“When your mother doesn't want to have the sex talk with you any more but instead wants to talk about the possibility that you might have sex on her soft furnishings, it's a watershed moment in any girl's life. I know I'll remember it fondly for many years to come.”

“I think sometimes she lies in bed at night and plots ways to make my life suck.There can be no other explanation.”

“...my awkward silence default setting kicked in.”

“...occasionally I can be quite evil, when there's no-one around to realise.”

“Just once, I'd like to find a boy. And I like him and he likes me. And we have a laugh and the kissing's really good and there's no-one getting in the way of the laughing and the kissing. Is that too much to ask?”

“There was only one way to get through the rest of the evening and it wasn't sober.”

“Sometimes it frightens me how much I enjoy behaving like a complete cow.”

“... Veronique and Dylan having the mother of all arguments. I mean, it had a plot and a subplot and several walk-on parts....”

“One day you’ll wake up and find that the pain’s still there but it doesn’t hurt quite so much.”

“I did get lost but I wanted someone to find me.”

“I was a heartless, ungrateful wench of a girl who promised everyone who came into contact with me a one-way ticket to pain and hurt. I didn’t know how to love and I didn’t deserve to be loved back.”

“I think I needed to be really hurt on the outside so the hurt on the inside would realize that it wasn’t on its own and that it had to come out.”

“My whole life had split in two: Smith and not Smith. I liked the Smith parts of it so much better.”

“And suddenly I got what the big deal was about kissing. How someone could suck on your bottom lip and make you come completely undone. That someone stroking the hair back from your face could make you swoon and someone sliding his hands underneath your top could make you feel wanted for the first time in your life.”

“Getting money from my dad is a finesse job. Luckily, I have finesse coming out of my arse. I barged into his study without knocking, marched across to his desk, and held out my hand. “Give me twenty pounds,” I snapped. “I need twenty pounds. Give it to me. Now!”

“Brie! Do Beyonce or Christina or whichever lame MTV diva you're mostly admiring this week waste their time with what-ifs? No, they spend all their energy on looking fabulous and cutting down any bitch that dares get in their way.-Charlie”