“Hare Rama... I felt a jolt of energy coursing up my spine. I'm in Kathmandu, I kept telling myself - as the sounds began to permeate every pore of my body. It's a full moon - I'm on a glorious valley at the top of the world, I'm actually here - surrounded by the most extraordinary group of people, yes, I'm actually here, and the chanting is building and building until it becomes one great shout of ecstasy, and suddenly I'm chanting too - I've moved into the circle, I'm pounding on a drum, and I'm looking into the eyes of people around me - and I'm feeling part of something big and glorious and magnificently insane”

“amazingly, i'd actually forgotten that i'm supposed to be plain. i'm so used to alex telling me i'm beautiful. i'm so used to feeling beautiful around him. a hollow opens up in my chest. this is what life will be like without him: everything will become ordinary again. i'll become ordinary again.”

“People call me a perfectionist, but I'm not. I'm a rightist. I do something until it's right, and then I move on to the next thing.”

“I'm absolutely removed from the world at such times...The hours go by without my knowing it. Sitting there I'm wandering in countries I can see every detail of - I'm playing a role in the story I'm reading. I actually feel I'm the characters - I live and breath with them.”

“Everything around me is evaporating. My whole life, my memories, my imagination and its contents, my personality - it's all evaporating. I continuously feel that I was someone else, that I felt something else, that I thought something else. What I'm attending here is a show with another set. And the show I'm attending is myself.”

“I'm always telling myself I don't have many feelings. Even when something does affect me I'm only moderately moved. I almost never cry. It's not that I'm stronger than the ones with teary eyes, I'm weaker. They have courage. When all you are is skin and bones, feelings are a brave thing. I'm more of a coward. The difference is minimal though, I just use my strength not to cry. When I do allow myself a feeling, I take the part that hurts and bandage it up with a story that doesn't cry, that doesn't dwell on homesickness.”