“A good soup attracts chairs. This is an African proverb. I can hear the shuffling and squeaking on the wood floor, the gathering 'round. This, from just five well-chosen words.”

“He would rock back and forth in his chair, making sure it squeaked ominously. He always found a chair that squeaked ominously. He was so good at squeaking ominously that he managed to make year-six teacher number two burst into tears.”

“The days shuffled by like bland schoolgirls. I didn’t notice their individual faces, only their basic uniform: day and night, day and night.I had no patience for showers or balanced meals. I did a lot of lying on floors — childish certainly, but when one can lie on floors without anyone seeing one, trust me, one will lie on a floor. I discovered, too, the fleeting yet discernible joy of biting into a Whitman’s chocolate and throwing the remaining half behind the sofa in the library. I could read, read, read until my eyes burned and the words floating like noodles in soup.”

“Oh, for Christ's sake,' I hear. 'Can we please just try to have a good time?' This is like ordering someone to find you attractive, and it doesn't work. I've tried it.”

“No blade can puncture the human heart like the well-chosen words of a spiteful son.”

“Very quickly, very suddenly, words fell through my mind. They landed on the floor of my thoughts, and in there, down there, I started to pick the words up. They were excerpts of truth gathered from inside me.”