“...a choice had to be made when your husband said something unkind. Specifically: be cruel, be strong, or sulk. 'Be cruel' by saying an unkind thing back. 'Be strong' by choosing not to mind. But to do this, you have to use up a piece of your love. You have to shave off enough of the love to forgive. After a while, the piece might grow back, but sometimes not. And if you shave off all the soft curves, you'll be left with a sharp-edged love. 'Sulk' by sulking. Sulking is simply delaying the choice to be cruel or strong.”

“Dear Complete and Utter Stranger,The first thing that I have to say is that I hate oatmeal. I really hate it. And you know what? If you like oatmeal at all? I mean even the tiniest bit? I mean, say you were lost in the Himalayas, right, and you hadn't eaten anything except a Mars Bar for about seven years, right, and you're really cold and your fingers are all dropping off, right, and you look behind this rock, and there's this bowl of oatmeal? Say you would even think about eating the oatmeal?Well, JUST DON'T BOTHER WRITING TO ME, OKAY?”

“Emily said ... Well, I read that it's important to sleep. While you sleep, the hippopotamus in your brain replays things that happend during the day, e.g. what you studied. So therefore it remembers it for you.”

“Dear Amelia,I hear there are giant jellyfish in the Arctic,tentacles longer than train carriages.Haystacks fly over cities in whirlwinds, and fish frogs and turtles rain on towns.There are spaces of perfect nothing that they call black holes.Nothing's impossible- that's what you think I'm trying to say.But I'm not.There are things that are impossible - unimaginable even- and here they are: That I broke you.Betrayed you.Said I'd given up on you. Sent you flying to a park in a thunderstorm.That I've been wrong about you all along- saw something in your face each time you faded to your past, when the opposite was true.That all this time you've been lost and that I won't get a second chance to find you.Amelia your name is a song. It's a name you can't say without smiling or crying, without casting both shadows and light. But there are too many places to hide or get lost in a name like Amelia.So this is me shouting that name. They say nobody ever escapes from a black hole. They don't know the strength in my Amelia. The strength in your grip when you want to stay out dancing- the strength in your wicked smile.Riley”

“Sure and you've got to keep your own spitis up, for there's no one else will do that for you!”

“A bean bag is a perfect place to sulk. You can sink way down deep, and sulk for hours... You only have to stick your head up once in a while... to see if anybody cares.”

“When she got back from taking Cassie to school Fancy knew that she ought to be working on her wilderness romance. She had promised thirty thousand words to her editor by tomorrow, and she had only written eleven. Specifically: His rhinoceros smelled like a poppadom: sweaty, salty, strange and strong.Her editor would cut that line.”