“Carpe Dium, I say. Seize the day. Grab it by the throat and rattle its bollocks”

“Everyone said that one day I was going to have a big accident, an accident to end all accidents. One day you might look up and see a kid falling from the sky. That would be me.”

“Hangovers are a vivid form of vengeance. Last night my apartment became the venue for a small, introverted chardonnay festival. A melancholy choir of Bulgarians provided the entertainment, via a set of headphones that ended up irredeemably tangled beneath the bed. Part of me just watched. The other part was in charge.”

“Ella. If you don’t learn to carpe the diem, you will be, while most certainly not Nobody, something less than a Somebody.”

“I fell again, head over heels, uncontrollably and without a chance to grab hold before it swallowed me hard and whole.”

“As I hurried along I was thinking how great it was to earn real money I don't have to ask my parents for. At last! I've worked out that I could probably handle as many as four dogs at a time. If I take them out just on school days I could earn 200 euros a week for five hours' work and have the weekends free to shop and spend it. It's going to be brilliant.I should have asked Stephanie what kind of dog it was. I eyeballed a Great Dane warily, my face about level with its. Bloody hell it was huge. Size of a pony. Wasn't sure whether I was expected to walk it or stick a saddle on its back and ride the thing.”

“I said to myself: what if I woke up, and every single day I did everything within my ability during that day to change my life. What could happen in just a month? A year?”