“You don’t have to have clarity,” he said, “to take a clear position.”

“The way is not clear, and it is when you do not have clarity, when this is allowed, that you will finally have clarity.”

“If you can’t state your position in eight words, you don’t have a position. ”

“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.”

“And I’ll accept everything about you. You don’t have to forget how you loved him before—I’ll still take care of you.” Yokozawa doesn’t quite get the meaning… “I said I’d accept you unconditionally—you don’t have to change at all.”

“The best way to succeed is to have a specific Intent, a clear Vision, a plan of Action, and the ability to maintain Clarity. Those are the Four Pillars of Success. It never fails!”