“There's light and joy, but there's also darkness all around and we can be lost in it.”

“This is our world. Aye, there's more than enough of darkness in it. But over everything there's all this joy, Kit. There's all this lovely, lovely light.”

“Death is knowing you're about to die,' says Mam. It's seeing the dead and seeing the living all at once. It's wanting not to die and not to live. It's wanting to stay with the last breath when the dead and the living are all around you, and touching you, and whispering, It's all right, Mam. Everything's all right. But there's no way of staying with the last breath. You have to die.”

“We have each other, and our stories twist and mingle like the twisting currents of a river. We hold each other tight as we spin and lurch across our lives. There are moments of great joy and magic. The most astounding things can lie waiting as each day dawns, as each page turns.”

“All of us can do what we like.”“No we can’t. You’re stupid if you think so.”

“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.”

“We come to a lamp beside the pathway, and suddenly we stop walking, and we start to dance, and we glitter in the shafts of light, like stars, like flies, like flakes of dust.”