“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.”

“3:12 pm Secretly, I admit, I find many of my classmates annoying. I've often thought to myself, 'Good grief, these people are five-year-olds. Why must I spend my days among them?' But have I ever said such things aloud? No. I have been nothing but generous to them, and kept these thoughts to myself. And how have they repaid me? Have they been grateful or kind? Ho NO!”

“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”

“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!”

“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.”

“Are you sure you want me to go after Christina? Lately I've kind of thought I might just give up on that. Plus, didn't you and I need to gaze into each other's eyes first? How will I know how to gaze at Christina? And my pebble kicking? Disaster.”

“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.”