Exciting Times: 'Droll, shrewd and unafraid – a winning debut' Hilary Mantel

In Russia, Edith had said, you could get Putin’s face on anything. Vodka, bread, you name it. In Hong Kong, the same was true of Hello Kitty.

In Hong Kong English, ‘helping someone do something’ could mean you did it and they did not assist.

I knew Edith was typing and seeing words form on her side, but they weren’t there on mine, which made them subjunctive: wish or feeling, less than fact. Ellipsis meant absence, nothing in the bell jar, no proof – not a specimen. The dots waved like trills on Chopin’s staves, turn them how you will.

You broke up with the love of your life because you saw how much power they had to hurt you.

i think that’s why it’s hard for me to love. my first memories of love are bound up with my first memories of being hated.

i thought if i let anyone in, they’d find out what was broken about me.

They told me they’d read on the news that Leonardo da Vinci belonged to a – ‘cult’, I supplied – and had left – ‘symbols’, I said – in the picture. I asked whether they meant he was in the Illuminati, tracing a triangle in the air with my index finger. They said maybe. Mona Lisa had small numbers and letters painted into her eyes. They were invisible from far away, but you could see them if you used a – ‘magnifying glass’.

Really, it was more impressive that my eight-year-olds knew Mona Lisa existed than it was that I knew who’d created her.

October turned to November, and still I had no girlfriend. I wondered if I could get a poem out of that.

i sat there and breathed in the dead books. breathed is two syllables when i say it and only one when you do. that could be important but maybe it isn’t.