“He seemed to be lying on the bed. He could not see very well. Her youthful, rapacious face, with blackened eyebrows, leaned over him as he sprawled there.“‘How about my present?’ she demanded, half wheedling, half menacing.“Never mind that now. To work! Come here. Not a bad mouth. Come here. Come closer. Ah!“No. No use. Impossible. The will but not the way. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Try again. No. The booze, it must be. See Macbeth. One last try. No, no use. Not this evening, I’m afraid.“All right, Dora, don’t you worry. You’ll get your two quid all right. We aren’t paying by results.“He made a clumsy gesture. ‘Here, give us that bottle. That bottle off the dressing-table.’“Dora brought it. Ah, that’s better. That at least doesn’t fail.”

“See Pitch over there?" he asked, pointing with his chin. "Try to get her to come to you."Pitch had wandered from the other horses, trying to get at the hay in the wagon’s bed. My eyebrows rose, giving him a pained look. "You mean, here, horsy, horsy, horsy..."He gave me a severe look, but his eyes were glittering in a repressed amusement.”

“He says to me, Ranulph, he says... that the past will never come again, but that we must remember that the past is made of the present, and that the present is always here.”

“Girl, you better stop apologizing to me. I’m just glad you’re all right. Now, here is Master Jax’s number. You need to call him. He has gone to your house looking for you. I ain’t never seen the boy all worked up and worried as he was when you didn’t show. Don’t you worry about a thing, and call him, please, before he gets the police searching for you.”

“His face was pale, and he dropped to the floor so that he was half kneeling, half sitting before her. "Please. I can...help you.""No." She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her mind felt clearer now. Everything made more sense when she wasn't so hungry. "I don't think I want the help you have."He cradled his bloody arm and tried to stand. "This isn't right. You aren't right. You aren't suppose to be here.""But I am.”

“It’s my job really, to help you, my reader, in accepting things as real that aren’t. Most books try to get you to accept things that, at the very least, could be real – and that’s difficult enough, goodness knows – but here, in this book, nothing seems to be even trying to be real. Except, I would say, me. I’m here, I’m real. And to be honest, I’ve never been here before. I don’t know where I am, I don’t know what I’m doing. In some ways, I’m afraid this is the most real story I’ve ever written.”