Quotes from Zoë Sharp

Honestly. There are days when I only open my mouth to change feet.

She gave a single low cry, little more than a loud gasp, as I landed on top of her. In trying desperately to stay light I inevitably made myself heavier. Sod's law. I

soft, and they don't flinch when you kick them…

I think my mother secretly hoped that I'd turn into one of those girlie girls. It wasn't her fault that I firmly resisted any attempts to mould me into an ideal daughter. You can take a girl to ballet lessons as much as you like, but you can't necessarily make her into a ballerina.

Nothing happened on the journey to their hotel, where McGregor took station. He had nothing to report when Sean and I arrived to relieve him in the morning, and nothing untoward happened the following day, either. Unless you counted the excruciating politeness with which Sean and my father treated each other. It screeched at my nerves like a tone-deaf child with their first violin.

Even little old ladies seem to drive like demons in Germany. By comparison, when we were balked by them I felt I could have got out and walked faster.

Meet Curly and Mo," I said. "I want you to divide into two groups and form an orderly queue to give these two a bit of stick. Basically, do what you like to them. Punch them, kick them, knee them in the knackers. Pretend they're your boss, your spouse, or whoever's been giving you grief lately.

By the time events reach the stage where you have to stand and fight, you have to be fully prepared to put everything you've got into it and not hold anything back. You might only get one chance.

Self-defence," I said slowly, looking him straight in the eye, "is all about getting out of dangerous situations without getting hurt.

I may not own any carpets, but you've got to get your priorities right when it comes to life's luxuries. In my case it was music, microwave and movies—probably in that order.

It's green. Not a nice subdued British Racing, more Kawasaki Racing. A bilious shade of lime, bordering on fluorescent.

The Suzuki hit a trace of diesel on the second one and shied sideways, damned near high-siding me into the back end of a lumbering Volvo saloon. It would have made an ironic change for a biker to have wiped out a Swedish tank

Those clever hands began to smooth up and down my spine, one of his habitual gestures. He traced the indentations of my vertebrae with his fingertips through the thin cotton of my shirt, like he was reading the signs of my body by Braille.

Human history is littered with might-have-beens.

I'd just dropped an emotional bombshell on my father. And it didn't seem to have gone off.

As the sliding doors opened the wet Florida heat hit me in the face like a sneezing dragon. The surface

How many times had people made that very same mistake with me? So often I'd almost come to rely on it as part of my camouflage.

For Andy, who encouraged me to write in the first place. See, this is all your fault . . .

I kept motionless and tried to think like a tree.