“Sometimes words come out of me and I don't know where they come from or why. They're like falling stars tumbling through the universe; bright, burning things that can't be stopped.”

“I saw pearls in her mouth and the velvet cushion of her tongue and I heard the magic words come out of her.”

“I know that sentence is long and has too many joining words in it but sometimes, when I'm angry, words burst out of me like a shout, or, if I'm sad, they spill out of me like tears, and if I'm happ...”

“I didn't understand right away what she meant. But her words soaked through my skull like warm oil, behind my eyes, down my spine and into the empty space inside me.”

“Sometimes I can see colour without opening my eyes. I saw that Billy's heart was no colour and every colour. Like water or diamonds or crystals, it's pure and reflects the light.”

“... we sat back and let the moon shine itself all over her, and we saw that Tia was full of light. Billy said that when we die the darkness leaves us.'We're pure and perfect then,' he said, 'the wa...”

“Ever have a dream so real you felt you could reach out and touch it?”

“The nearest thing we have to a defence against [the gods] (but there is no real defence) is to be very wide awake and sober and hard at work, to hear no music, never to look at earth or sky, and (a...”

“Today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well therefore to this day.”

“It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is in the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigour of Nature in us, that inspires that dream. I shall n...”