The question is never ‘who am I?’ It’s ’who do I want to be?

Real choices – the ones that changed you and shaped you – were never made with the head, but on the beat of a heart that saw a future it couldn’t live without.

She wasn’t really aware of the song as she sang it. Rather, she slipped through song’s tunnel, down its corridor of reality, until she landed in the seat of the music. It was strangely healing; addictively powerful. She hadn’t expected to become so engulfed by the notes.

She had forced herself to learn to read – picked up bits and pieces, here and there, from the very few teachers who had been patient with her; from looking at words while out and about; from television, and from friends. And to avoid the shouting and drug-induced moaning, and the row of male visitors her mum would entertain, she would barricade herself in her room – there’d been no lock – and lose herself in books.

She looked at him for an age, and he read nothing short of love on her face. It warmed him to the core he’d thought dead, and scared the crap out of him.

Then if we make it to tomorrow, we’ll be here to pick up the pieces, and help him carry his load. That’s what we do when we love someone: we don’t stop them from breaking, we help put them back together.

The only thing I need is for you to be happy. I’ll wait right here, until my last breath, for you to be happy.

They never got you, don’t you know that? You irritating, charming, stubborn, evolved, intolerable, sweet, complex, caring, melodramatic bastard with your heart of gold. They never got you. You’re wholly you, and you’re perfect.

I was a coward. I’ve been a coward. So have you. We’ve both got blood on our hands. We’re not the heroes who saved the world, we’re the villains who survived it. I’ve made my peace with that. You should, too, because guilt is a weight you’ll never swim away from.

Everything that matters hurts, until it doesn’t matter anymore.