“I could write an epic poem about your thighs.”“That would amuse polite society rather too much, and I wouldn’t like that.”“I wouldn’t either.” She pressed her cheek to his belly. “I can’t think of a word to rhyme with marble column.”

“A librarian can’t live by books alone, and I wouldn’t eat them if I could. Feel too much like cannibalism.”

“But I am, personally, not a gambler. I wouldn’t spend £1 on the lottery, let alone take a punt on a pregnancy. The stakes are far, far too high. I can’t agree with a society that would force me to bet on how much I could love under duress.”

“Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past”

“The person my heartache would spit out wouldn’t be Ellie Watt and she wouldn’t be Eden White. I didn’t know her name, but I knew she wouldn’t possess a heart.I was fucking scared of her.”

“Not that I did, bang her that is. I’m not saying I wouldn’t, how could I ever be sure about something like that?”