You must never believe everything they say about a person. Generally speaking, most of it will be lies, half-truths at best. - Kate Atkinson

Literature had fuelled her childhood fantasies and convinced her that one day she would be the heroine of her own narrative.

As you got older and time went on, you realized that the distinction between truth and fiction didn’t really matter because eventually everything disappeared into the soupy, amnesiac mess of history. Personal or political, it made no difference.

The plot thickens,” he said, and wished he hadn’t said that because it sounded like something from a bad detective novel. “I think we have a suspect.” That didn’t sound much better. “My house has just exploded, by the way.” At least that was novel.