“Morning: Slept.Afternoon: Slept.Evening: Ate grass.Night: Ate grass. Decided grass is boring. Scratched. Hard to reach the itchy bits.Slept.”

“Dance, my darling dance! If you dance then death can't catch you! Nothing bad can touch you! Dance!”

“Lady Dance's music wasn't a magic charm. I'd misunderstood. We had all failed to understand. The song and dance didn't stop us dying. It just stopped the fear of death swallowing us up while we were still alive. 'Rejoice,' came the soft voice of Lady Dance in my mind. 'Watch the moon and stars...' Death had ruled my life till I met Lady Dance. Her dance had set me free.”

“We're all bits that the war didn't take, Flinty thought, gazing at the stranger's back. But those left behind had a right to know more about the beast who'd chewed their lives and spat the remnants out.”

“I waved and cried and smiled at the same time like Mum and Mrs Mack, so Sandy and Jeff remember us smiling not sobbing as they left.”

“Dad called this the shadow time. The sun sucks colour from the world, he'd said. He'd taught her to see the softer colours of the dusk, the green and orange bark, the purple shadows. At times like this Flinty felt her edges vanish, leaving her part of the mountains, like the wallaby pulling wonga vine down from a thorn bush, or the sleepy possum peering from a tree.”

“What was war really like? What vast crack had buried Jeff down in the mud, had sent Andy off with cattle? What had changed her best friend so much he could barely look at her now?”