“I never saw anything like it. He was like the bit in the movie where Tom Cruise is a lawyer and he's decided he's really going to win this case, for the sake of justice and the American way, and that? And it's suddenly like bang-bang-bang—grabbing files off shelves and slamming them down on the desk and punching numbers in the telephone and shaking out the phone cord dramatically , and you know, snapping out instructions to all the assistants around the desk, like: "Get me all the phone records of the President of the United States for the last fifty years," and "Get me the names of every client who ever ate a banana," and "Let's get some Chinese take-out up here, on the double!”

“I saw your name in lights last night.It's the middle of the night,and I can't sleep,thinking all my trumpeting thoughts,and I get out of bed,open the curtains,and look into the night full of stars,and you know what I saw?Your name.Like the stars joined up and spelled the word for me.Like a sign.”

“I was just peeling some potatoes for dinner and they all looked like crisp white potatoes until I cut them in half. Every single one had a rotten, gray core. [. . .] I feel like the whole world is black, rotting, and evil. Even when it looks crisp on the outside, that's a lie, because you can't trust anything - on the inside it's nothing like mold. [. . .] So, see, nothing good is ever going to happen, and anyone who says it is, is lying to 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”

“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?”

“I've been sniffing out the guys in my English class (to the extent that this is possible without getting my throat cut), but they smell the same way they always do: like feet and testicles. As opposed to freesias. I don't want to keep sniffing them, Lyd. - Letter from Seb to Lyd.”

“She's always getting into trouble because she gets bored really really easily. [...]My mum says it's because Celia has an attention span the size of a sesame seed. Celia's mum says it's because Celia's identity is unfurling itself slowly, like a tulip bud, and it's a breathtakingly beautiful thing to see.”