“Just before the men closed the tail gate on the float, she strained her head to see me and nodded her head so hard her blonde mane flew around her faceshe looked like she was standing in a cloud of...”

“She simply stared at me with such a loving expression on her face, I felt like I was her foal. Indah reached her head as far as she could around me, to press me to her. I melted. How could I live w...”

“Peering around her, I took note exactly where the hundred metre high cliff started. i didn't want to be taking an unexpected flying lesson today.”

“Who was that? Layetta asked.Nobody.You cant take a phone call from nobody. That meansthere is no one on the other end of the phone, meaning no phone call. So. Who was it? I asked.”

“You two would get on like a house on fire. Don't douse the flames before you've struck a match.”

“My mouth fell open in incredulity.Ah, Maria. Are you trying to tell me youve taken up the sport of fly-catching with your mouth?Ros reached over and lifted my chin.And an assistant too. So that you...”

“When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for t...”

“You know Balbec so well - do you have friends in the area?'I have friends wherever there are companies of trees, wounded but not vanquished, which huddle together with touching obstinacy to implore...”

“Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying youre friends is easy. Being friends is not.”

“If someone were to harm my family or a friend or somebody I love, I would eat them. I might end up in jail for 500 years, but I would eat them.”

“Sometimes you know you've got a chance with a girl because she wants to fight with you. If the world wasn't so messed up, it wouldn't be like that. If the world was normal, a girl being nice to you...”

“Smirking, he says, "Whatever spell you just tried to cast on me, it didn't work, so I think you need to go back to Hogwarts.”

“I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,I see my father strolling outunder the ochre sandstone arch, thered tiles glinting like bentplates of blood behind his head, Isee my mother...”

“We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the world they really believed in...”

“Id never heard my parents make love. If they made love, they did it silently, like bank robbers, like surgeons.”