“Disgust rose in Samantha like vomit. She wanted to seize the over-warm cluttered room and mash it between her hands, until the royal china, and the gas fire, and the gilt-framed pictures of Miles broke into jagged pieces; then, with wizened and painted Maureen trapped and squalling inside the wreckage, she wanted to heave it, like a celestial shot-putter, away into the sunset. The crushed lounge and doomed crone inside it, soared in her imagination through the heavens, plunging into the limitless ocean, leaving Samantha alone in the endless stillness of the universe.”

“She was actively frightened of imparting confidences, because she feared that they might betray the world of oddness that lived inside her”

“She navigated away from the Parish Council message board and dropped into her favorite medical website, where she painstakingly entered the words "brain" and "death" in the search box.The suggestions were endless. Shirley scrolled through the possibilities, her mild eyes rolling up and down, wondering to which of these deadly conditions, some of them unpronounceable, she owed her present happiness.”

“Krystal flung herself violently off the chair, away from her mother. She was surprised to feel warm liquid flowing down her cheeks, and thought confusedly of blood, but it was tears, only tears, clear and shining on her fingertips when she wiped them away.”

“Who're you going with, then?" said Ron."Angelina," said Fred promptly, without a trace of embarrassment."What?" said Ron, taken aback. "You've already asked her?""Good point," said Fred. He turned his head and called across the common room, "Oi! Angelina!"Angelina, who had been chatting with Alicia Spinnet near the fire, looked over at him."What?" She called back."Want to come to the ball with me?"Angelina gave Fred a sort of appraising look."All right, then," she said, and she turned back to Alicia and carried on chatting with a bit of a grin on her face."There you go," said Fred to Harry and Ron, "piece of cake.”

“Rita looked as though she would have liked nothing better than to seize the paper umbrella sticking out of Hermione's drink and thrust it up her nose.”

“How desperate she had been for a storybook ending, and a life to which Gaia would always want to return; because her daughter's departure was hurtling towards Kay like a meteorite, and she foresaw the loss of Gaia as a calamity that would shatter her world.”