After all, there was something rather pleasant in knowing that you were misunderstood. It made you feel different from everyone else.

Laura began to model herself more and more on those around her; to grasp that the unpardonable sin is to vary from the common mould.

All my life I've felt like there was something wrong with me. Something missing or damaged."
"Every teenager in the world feels like that, feels broken or out of place, different somehow, royalty mistakenly born into a family of peasants.

Adolescence is a plague on the senses.

As women glide from their twenties to thirties, Shazzer argues, the balance of power subtly shifts. Even the most outrageous minxes lose their nerve, wrestling with the first twinges of existential angst: fears of dying alone and being found three weeks later half-eaten by an Alsatian.

Of habit, the power that keeps the earth from flying to pieces; though there is some silly theory of gravitation.