Little girls don't stay playmates. Little girls become big girls and big girls become sweethearts. - Susan Howatch

But never mind, all the best heroines are beautiful orphans, abandoned to their fate, and the one thing that's certain about my situation is that I'm going to be a heroine when I grow up.
Can I be a hero?
Well, I suppose you can try. But you'll have to try very hard.

Romance is the opiate of the dissatisfied, it anaesthesises them from the pain of their disordered second-rate lives [...] If romance is the opiate of the dissatisfied then surely nostalgia is the opiate of the disillusioned, for those who see all their dreams come true and find themselves living in a nightmare.

I deserve to be thought a coward. I am a coward. I'm just so bloody afraid of dying — of losing —