Ignis aurum probat. 'Fire tests gold.' The rest of the phrase: '… and adversity tests the brave'.

Before and after the fire. One day I was breakfasting on watermelon, feta and pomegranate seeds, the next I was eating toasted Mother's Pride smeared with margarine. That's the story Mummy told me, at...

I entered the room at the end of the corridor, where, as I correctly found, the kitchen was. This room was also fields of people and noise, but I was able to distinguish marble work surfaces, luminous...

It is incomprehensible to me now that I could ever have thought that anyone would love this ambulant bag of blood and bones.

No matter; I didn't require

I do feel that tube tops are best suited to the under twenty-fives, if, indeed, they are suited to anyone.

I am not generally a wearer of perfume, preferring to smell of plain soap and my natural musk, but, were it possible to purchase a bottle in which the scent of new pencil shavings and the petroleum...

I had convinced myself that he was the one, that he would help to make me normal, fix the things that were wrong with my life.

I realized what I felt . . . happy. It was such a strange, unusual feeling-light, calm, as though I'd swallowed sunshine.

I suppose, although they should get drunk at home, like I do, so that they don't cause anyone else any trouble. But then, not everyone is as sensible and considerate as me.

It fell open at a pivotal scene, the one where Jane meets Mr. Rochester for the first time, startling his horse in the woods and causing him to fall. Pilot is there too, the handsome, soulful-eyed...

These magazines could tell me which clothes and shoes to wear, how to have my hair styled in order to fit in. They could show me the right kind of makeup to buy and how to apply it. This way, I would...

I'm not lonely, Mummy," I said, protesting. "I'm fine on my own. I've always been fine on my own.

Human mating rituals are un-believably tedious to observe. At least in the animal kingdom you are occasionally treated to a flash of bright feathers or a display of spectacular violence. Hair flicking...

I had no idea what it was, but I realized that I'd happily sit here in the warmth with him and watch a golf programme if that was all there was.

felt a warmth inside, a cosy, glowy feeling like hot tea on a cold morning.

...libraries are life-enhancing palaces of wonder

There is no such thing as hell, of course, but if there was, then the sound track to the screaming, the pitchfork action and the infernal wailing of damned souls would be a looped medley of "show...