Tammy Cohen Quotes

There was something about this girl's body language, the way she kept darting a look at Leanne, then turning her eyes quickly away, that made her think maybe she was telling the truth. In Leanne's experience, if people were lying, they tended either to look away the whole time or to fix you with intense eye contact as if daring you to disbelieve them.

We'd met at university, where he was studying medicine and I was studying social awkwardness and a catastrophic inability to cope with deadlines.

Suddenly Guy appeared in the doorway. Emma was surprised to see he had his jacket on, a black leather biker-style one he wore with the self-consciousness of a girl in her first pre-teen bra.

It's like those kids who grow up in houses where the parents speak different languages and turn out bilingual. If they're exposed to something at an early enough age, they absorb it naturally and becomes just something normal.

It was something she'd told him off about on more than one occasion, this tendency to offer up his private sadnesses as a form of mass entertainment.

Just how many ways it's possible to fuck up a child so badly that ten, twenty, forty years later they're still trying to make sense of it.

Double-clicking on his inbox, Jason noted that one of the three messages was from Suzy, aka ButterfliesInMyTummy, and his mood lifted. It was the fourth or fifth message they'd exchanged, and they were just starting to move beyond the tedious small-talk stage. He skimmed through the message, growing increasingly impatient. Suzy favoured those little face icons. The whole page was littered with them – smiley faces, sad faces, surprised faces, embarrassed faces. Why couldn't she just use words like everyone else? She also put five or six exclamation marks after a sentence, or added extra vowels to words, so everything was sooooooooo much fun or soooooooooo boring. It wound Jason up when people couldn't write properly. He wasn't asking for brain of Britain, but he liked a woman to be able to write a sentence that started with a capital letter and ended with a full stop and at least made an attempt at the Queen's English. At least it wasn't in text speak. He refused to answer the messages that spelled thanks 'tnx'. Britain didn't go through two World Wars so that the English language could be mutilated beyond recognition.

My house has one integral living space and I am sitting on the couch facing the TV, while she is perched on a stool at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, my laptop open in front of her. We have adopted these same positions so many times over the years, it's like we have worn a groove in time. I imagine us suspended here for ever, like tiny figures in a doll's house.

When you're a parent it's like you wear your heart on the outside of your body.

Sarah couldn't remember when she'd last seen Charlie this happy. It was as if someone had yanked the dial of the dimmer switch round, lighting him up from inside. Normal Charlie was an endearing if reserved mix of cynicism and kindness, warmth and resignation. Now he shone with an emotional energy so exposing you almost wanted to look away, as if you were seeing something you shouldn't.

Fling. That's how he saw their night together. She'd been thinking of box-sets with a blanket over their laps and mini-breaks to Rome or Berlin and making love in front of an open fire or on a deserted beach with the sun reflecting gold in those amber flecks in his eyes . . . and he'd been thinking 'fling'.

The corridor of the Psychiatry Department of La Luz City University Medical Facility was a sterile affair. Since then it's been painted in a mellow magnolia and there's some framed artwork on the walls. We had a memo before the prints went up, checking whether we considered them suitably 'non-stimulating'. We all joked about that for a long time afterwards. 'Nice jacket,' we'd say, 'but are you sure it's non-stimulating enough?