My life was a wreck. I had nothing, no material possessions, unless debts counts. Fourteen pairs of shoes that were too small for me was all I had to show after a lifetime of profligate...

You’ve recognised a fundamental feature of an addict’s life. Maintaining your habit is so important you’ve no real interest in anything else.

…as you know, I don’t believe in fear, just an invention by men so they get all the money and good jobs…

It was only when the salt water of my tears ran into my cuts and made them stingthat I discovered I was crying.

In the same way that the stewards on the Titanic were more concerned about the unemptied ashtrays on the bar than the enormous hole in the side of the ship which was letting in zillions...

You only grow up by living through the shit that life throws at you

People don’t tend to employ me. I’m the wrong personality type. Or rather, people do tend to employ me for a short time and then they sack me. A film broker once told me, as...

If you lose someone, you feel a loss, then after a while you fill in the hole in your life and the loss gradually gets smaller and smaller and eventually goes away. There’s a point...

I need you to get inside Wayne’s head. I need someone who thinks a bit left field and in your own unpleasant way, Helen Walsh, you’re a genius.He had a point. I’m lazy and illogical....

Failed relationships can be described as so much wasted make-up.

The back windows looked out over the fields, then the Atlantic, maybe a hundred yards away. Actually, I’m just making that bit up. I had no idea how far away the sea was. Only men...

I’d rather eat nothing than eat a carrot.

why can’t we love the right people? what is so wrong with us that we rush into situations to which we are manifestly unsuited, which will hurt us and others? why are we given emotions...

But you’ve loads of shoes,” he bellowed joyfully. I shook my head sadly. Men just don’t get it, do they? They’re definitely missing the shoe chromosome.

I forced myself to stop thinking about it. I went to the room in my brain where all my thoughts about Adam lived and disconnected the electricity and boarded up all the doors and windows,...

What doesn’t kill us makes us funnier.

I couldn’t be with people and I didn’t want to be alone. Suddenly my perspective whooshed and I was far out in space, watching the world. I could see millions and millions of people, all...

You will go on and meet someone else and I’ll just be a chapter in your tale, but for me, you were, you are and you always will be, the whole story.

It was ironic, really – you want to die because you can’t be bothered to go on living – but then you’re expected to get all energetic and move furniture and stand on chairs and...

Two and a half years ago I’d learned to stop wanting comfort from the people around me, because they couldn’t give it. We were all too scared. I was terrified and so were they. No...

Survival was an unpleasent thing to witness.

I had spent my whole life feeling homesick. The only difference between the two of us was that I didn’t know what or where home was.

The last time I’d been unwell, suicidally depressed, whatever you want to call it, the reactions of my friends and family had fallen into several different camps:The Let’s Laugh It Off merchants: Claire was the...

Temporary Insanity had come a-knocking and I had shouted “Come on in the door is open.” Luckily, Reality had come unexpectedly and found Temporary Insanity roaming the corridors of my mind unchecked, going into rooms,...

when happiness makes a guest appearance in one’s life,it’s important to make the most of it.It may not stay around for long and when it has gone wouldn’t it be terrible to think that all...

People get sick and sometimes they get better and sometimes they don’t. And it doesn’t matter if the sickness is cancer or if it’s depression. Sometimes the drugs work and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes the...

I love Prada. Not so much the clothes, which are for malnourished thirteen-year-olds, but I covet, with covety covetousness, the shoes and handbags. Like, I LOVE them. If I was given a choice between world...

They say the path of true love never runs smooth. Well, Luke and my true love’s path didn’t run at all, it limped along in new boots that were chafing its heels. Blistered and cut,...

Waiting to be ‘better’ is the wrong approach. It’s learning to live with it.

Guilt is a self-indulgence.

I’m giving myself the rest of the day off.