The Sudden Appearance of Hope

by Claire North

I’ve always liked knowledge. It makes me feel like I’m real, part of something after all.

I wondered if she would be pleased, knowing that someone was thinking of her.

On death of others. I think about this a lot myself.

“You know why the experts don’t have an easy answer? Because a fucking expert’s the guy who knows how complicated the fucking questions are.”

Onychophagia: an oral compulsive habit, nail biting. Apply a chemical lacquer to the nails to prevent chewing. Denatonium benzoate: the most

I am a shadow, blasted away by the sun, a meaningless occlusion of light that fades with the day.

on the seventh day I stood by the railway tracks, and told myself that it was time to die, but the trains were suspended that day for a fault on the line, and I lost interest and my nerve.

Hashtag Britain!

Happy: to be pleased, delighted or glad. Favoured by fortune. The experience of pleasure, or joy. Happiness: a lie, constructed to ensure that we never find it.

Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars and see yourself running in them.’” “‘Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not a truth.’”

Only briefly, only for a moment, do I remember that I am a thief, and that I lost the moral high ground a long time ago.

a passing dream. And now. Gone. Broken like a spider’s web, trailing in the breeze.

The internet gave us all the power of speech, and what did we discover? That victory goes to he who shouts the loudest, and that reason does not sell.

You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realise this, and you will find strength.

I thought I was so clever, so clever and in control, so fucking fuckety fuck fuck fucking clever FUCK

Approximately two hundred billion galaxies in the universe, assuming infinity to be an unhelpful term.

Reality, time, the past, it’s as fickle as a dream, when you look back on it.”