Deborah Levy

Smoking cheap Spanish filthy sock-tobacco under a pine tree was so much better than trying to hold it together on escalators.

There was something comforting about being literally lost when I was lost in every other way

When happiness is happening it feels as if nothing else happened before it, it is a sensation that happens only in the present tense.

was always gathering evidence for something I could not fathom.

‘To speak up is not about speaking lou

is about feeling entitled to voice a wish.

heat outside was so fierce

There were many modern and apparently powerful women I knew who had made a home for everyone else, but did not feel at home in their family home.

they knew about the concert I had messed up three weeks ago while playing Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and how I had walked off the stage in Vienna

She seemed to be about my age, thirty-four, and like me she was wearing a tightly belted green raincoat.