“I woke up and knew he was gone. Straightaway I knew he was gone. When you love somebody you know these things.”

“I thought how you can never tell just by looking at them what they were thinking or what was happening In their lives. Even when you got daft people or drunk people on buses, people that went on stupid and shouted rubbish or tried to tell you all about themselves, you could never really tell about them either... I knew if somebody looked at me, they'd know nothing about me, either.”

“Anything seems possible at night when the rest of the world has gone to sleep.”

“When you grow up", I said, "do you ever stop feeling little and weak?""No," she says. "There's always a little frail and tiny thing inside, no matter how grown-up you are.”

“It happened so long ago I can't even be sure it happened as I say it did. Stories change in the telling, memory makes up as much as it knows. We were very small. The things we saw were all mixed up with the things we dreamed and the things we were scared of.”

“What are you?" I whispered.He shrugged again."Something," he said. "Something like you, something like a beast, something like a bird, something like an angel." He laughed. "Something like that.”

“He narrows his eyes.“Is this true?” He sighs. “It is, isn’t it? That’s all I need.”