“Australians are very unfair in this way. They spend half of any conversation insisting that the country's dangers are vastly overrated and that there's nothing to worry about, and the other half telling you how six months ago their Uncle Bob was driving to Mudgee when a tiger snake slid out from under the dashboard and bit him on the groin, but that it's okay now because he's off the life support machine and they've discovered he can communicate with eye blinks.”

“Sam whacked Jacob over the ear. 'You know,' he said, his voice low, 'those pancakes'll go straight to your hips.'Jacob glowered at him. 'You know,' he mimicked, 'there's a reason nothing rhymes with orange.''There is a reason,' returned Sam. 'It's because orange comes from the Arabic word naranj, which in turn is thought to derive from the Tamil words aru, which means six, and anju, which means five. Because when you cut an orange in half, it has six segments in one half and five in the other. So nothing rhymes with it because we don't have many other words appropriated from Tamil.”

“Sexual frenzy is our compensation for the tedious moments we must suffer in the passage of life. 'Nothing in excess,' professed the ancient Greeks. Why if I spend half the month in healthy scholarship and pleasant sleep, shouldn't I be allowed the other half to howl at the moon and pillage the groins of Europe's great beauties?”

“Life can change in the blink of an eye. All you have is right now. So don’t ever put off telling someone how you feel about them, don’t assume that they know, because they might not and it might be too late.”

“Okay. Now my skin is really prickling. I've read all the Harry Potter books, all five of them. I don't remember any half-blood prince."What's this?" Trying to sound casual, I point at the ad, "What's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince?""That's the latest book," Garth the other trainee, says. "It came out ages ago."I can't help gasping. "There's a sixth Harry Potter?""There's a seventh out soon!" Diana steps forward eagerly. "And guess what happens at the end of book six-""Shh!" exclaims Nicole, the other nurse. "Don't tell her!”

“Hitting is never the best way to teach a child. Even in the case of real danger - as when a child runs out into the road - you can grab him, sit him down, look him in the eyes, and tell him why he must never do that again. The panic in your voice will communicate your message much more effectively than any spanking. You can be dramatic without being abusive.”