Quote

From Caitlin Moran's novel "How to Build A Girl"

"The plane starts to taxi along the runway. I had no idea they went so fast. This is the fastest I have ever gone. We are already going too fast--and then we accelerate...This speed is inhuman, and unholy. It's angry. Planes have to become furious before they can fly. They kick the ground away, and punch into the clouds, screaming. We are fighting our way into the sky."

"The windows go pale grey--we've flown into the clouds. Rainclouds are dirty, and wet--looking out the window at them makes you feel like you have temporarily gone blind. The inside of a raincloud is a bubble of night. And then the plane pulls up higher...and we suddenly burst out into the bright, bright brilliant sunshine.

     And in the same way my first does of adrenaline anxiety blasted through me, like black floodwater two years ago, this is now the opposite.

     Sitting in seat 14A, in the sun, I float on a full-moon, tidal joy unlike anything I have ever experienced. I am getting incredibly high on a single, astounding fact: that it's always sunny above the clouds. Always. That every day on earth--every day I have ever had--was secretly sunny after all. However shitty and rainy it is in Wolverhampton--on the days where the clouds feel low like a lid, and the swarf bubbles and the gutters churn to digest--it's always been sunny up here.

     I feel like I've flown 600 miles an hour head-on into the most beautiful metaphor of my life: If you fly high enough, if you get above the clouds, it's never-ending summer."

"I resolve that for the rest of my life, at least once a day, I will remember this. I think it the most cheering thought I've ever had. When we finally land in Dublin, and I go off to meet John Kite, I am essentially drunk on the sky."