“When it comes to fake food, I’m like Samuel Johnson, who remarked, "Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.” In other words, I can give something up altogether, but I can’t indulge occasionally.”

“But this thing, whatever it was, this mistlike something, hung there inside my body like a certain kind of potential. I wanted to give it a name, but the word refused to come to mind. I’m terrible at finding the right words for things. I’m sure Tolstoy would have been able to come up with exactly the right word”

“I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark." Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)”

“Her smile was like a Samuel Beckett play - easy to read but difficult to interpret.”

“This is torment for me, Eva. I can’t focus. I can’t sleep. I lose my temper at the slightest irritants. I’m in hell without you.”

“Examine this statement: ‘A woman cannot be a poet.’ Dr Samuel Johnson (Englishman 1709-84 Occupation: Language Fixer and Big Mouth.) What then shall I give up? My poetry or my womanhood?”