Dolly Alderton

Many times, I would invent a person in my head and create our chemistry as if writing a screenplay, and by the time we’d meet again in real life, I’d be crushingly let down. It was as if, when things didn’t go as I imagined, I’d assumed he would have been given a copy of the script I’d written and I’d feel frustrated that his agent obviously forgot to courier it to him to memorize.

When I finally have a boyfriend, little else will matter.

When friends have boyfriends they become boring.

All the books and films and songs that had been written about it were not enough to cover all corners of how great it was; how did anyone see the opportunity in any evening for anything other than having sex or finding someone to have sex with? (This feeling had insidiously evaporated by my nineteenth birthday.)

Lauren is preoccupied with the emo singer and they’re talking about chord progressions; a sure sign she’s committed to the idea of sex.

I wanted my own friends, my own schedule, my own home, my own money and my own life. I found being a teenager one big, frustrating, mortifying, exposing, co-dependent embarrassment that couldn’t end fast enough.

My mum often told me this was a misguided act of feminism; that emulating the most yobbish behaviour of men was not a mark of equality

Yeah, you are,’ he replied. ‘I felt you come closer.’

Sometimes the gap between the little faith you have compared to the unwavering faith of others is a very moving thing.’

Maybe no man will ever be able to fill it.’