Little Lady, Big Apple

The best friendships are like mobile phones, I think--you can't explain exactly how they work, but you're just relieved they do.

There's a difference between compromising your independence and compromising yourself. Love's about giving up a little dependence, darling. But that doesn't mean you have to stop being you.

Stress can make people say things they don't mean, though. That's why you have to relax.

Outside, I avoided the gazes of passersby and slid gratefully into the cavernous interior of Godric's car. I didn't like to say "This is yours?" because wherever I placed the stress in that sentence, it sounded faintly insulting. It felt as if I were sitting inside a very pricey black leather handbag. Things glittered at me, and the bits that weren't leather or glittering were sort of dull black. It all smelled wildly expensive.

Back in the kitchen, Mummy was trying to make her [knitted] hippo stand up on the table. I had to swallow a gasp of horror -- its head was the same size as its body, none of its limbs were equal in length, and it appeared to have a fin. She didn't seem perturbed and carried on trying to make it stand with a childlike patience. Because of its grotesquely misshapen head, it looked as if it was trying to do some kind of yoga headstand. "That hippo's got five legs," observed Allegra from the window seat. "Unless you've made it very anatomically correct? In which case it's positively disturbing.

[The photos] all bore the hallmarks of very expensive lighting and artistry, but Godric was projecting variations on the same emotion in every single one of them. Acute awkwardness. Admittedly he'd really gotten "awkward" nailed--even in black Armani, leaning against a glass wall, he looked like a teenager waiting outside an STD clinic.

My mind seemed to think in terms of very bad song lyrics these days.

I want to share all of my New York with you, Melissa. My house, my friends, my life. It's not just about where you live, what you have. It's about who you are with. I know you get that, and I can't tell what it means to me.

I only had to breathe near cheesecake and I put on about five pounds. I had that sort of figure. Gabi called it voluptuous, but Marks & Spencer's called it size 12.

the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" were three entirely separate levels of information

Never actually having owned a dog myself, I wasn't sure what the correct procedure was. Did I offer to pay for the morning-after pill, or something? Should I insist that Braveheart marry her?