“I ain't askin' nobody for nothin'....so just leave this long haired country boy alone.”

“I wasn’t sure where to go from here. From the outside it seemed so straightforward. Leave, run away, start again. Julia had a lot going for her. She could have a whole new life. It clearly isn’t this straightforward as there are thousands of women like Julia who don’t leave or run away or start again. I would never really understand the complexities of Julia’s violent relationship but one thing was very clear. When she said that Andy had nobody else, what she was really saying was that she didn’t have anyone else. She was alone and, however difficult and abusive her relationship was, she clearly felt that it was all she had.”

“For me, the dying part wasn’t so horrible. I was only in pain for a few moments before death arrived. For me, the difficult part was having so many things that I had yet to experience, leaving behind people that I cared about. I wasn’t through living.”

“And the truth is I feel so angry, and the truth is I feel so fucking sad, and the truth is I've felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long I've been pretending I'm OK, just to get along, just for, I don't know why, maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own. Well, fuck everybody. Amen.”

“I like to walk in rain, so that nobody can see my tears.”

“Regardless of the country it is practised in, most of hospital medicine is painting over the cracks rather than fixing the wall.”

“I didn't move for probably ten more minutes. I wasn't sure if I could. If I moved, I just might shatter.”