“I had never handled a tool in my life, and yet in time, by labour, application, and contrivance, I found at last that I wanted nothing but I could have made it.”

“Yet I wouldn't trade it. I didn't want the life that made sense. Not if the chaos meant I could be with Bella.”

“Last night I'd made love to a woman for the first and last time. It had been amazing and I had a memory that would shape the rest of my life.”

“I would not have put it this way in those days, but because I was born a woman, I could never become an adult. I would always be a minor, my decisions made for me. I would always be a unit in a vast beehive. I might have a decent life, but I would be dependent—always—on someone treating me well. I knew that another kind of life was possible. I had read about it, and now I could see it, smell it in the air around me: the kind of life I had always wanted, with a real education, a real job, a real marriage. I wanted to make my own decisions. I wanted to become a person, an individual, with a life of my own.”

“He watched Warrick walk away across the café, and started sentences in his mind. Don't go yet. I want five minutes, that's all. One minute. I want you. This could be the last time I see you. This really could be the last time. I want you to—”

“I have found that the tools for my trade- writing, are very basic: paper, a pen, time, food and perhaps a little tequila...”