“It's as if a child with a brush and too much enthusiasm has been set free with a tin of black paint inside me.”

“The inside of the door is glossy white. A total re-paint. I touch it with my fingers, but it stays the same. It's so bright it makes the room waver at the edges. Every few years we disappear.”

“I can see inside planes!' he yells. 'Come and look!'It's difficult climbing in a mini dress...I haul myself up even though my arms ache. I want to see inside planes too. I want to watch the wind and catch birds in my fist.”

“when I was four I almost fell down the shaft of a tin mine and when I was five the car rolled over on the motorway and when I was seven we went on holiday and the gas ring blew out in the caravan and nobody noticedI've been dying all my life”

“Dad, you played rounders with me, even though you hated it and wished I'd take up cricket. You learned how to keep a stamp collecion because I wanted to know. For hours you sat in hospitals and never, not once, complained. You brushed my hair like a mother should. You gave up work for me, friends for me, four years of your life for me. You never moaned. Hardly ever. You let me have Adam. You let me have my list. I was outrageous. Wanting, wanting so much. And you never said, 'That's enough. Stop now.”

“No, really. I free you.'I don't want to be free.”

“Death straps me to the hospital bed, claws its way onto my chest and sits there.I didn't know it would hurt this much. I didn't know that everything good that's ever happened in my life would be emptied out by it.”