“Art boy is obviously intimidated. You're like the sun and he's squinting up at you, barely able to see because of your blinking radiance”

“Boys, Laila came to see, treated friendship the way they treated the sun: its existence undisputed; its radiance best enjoyed, not beheld directly.”

“So I'm just suppose to bare my soul to you?" In the blink of the eye, he darkens the moment. "Well, you're asking me to bare mine.”

“What makes the strength of the soldier isn't the energy he uses trying to intimidate the other guy by sending him a whole lot of signals, it's the strength he's able to concentrate within himself, by staying centered. That Maori player was like a tree, a great indestructible oak with deep roots and a powerful radiance- everyone could feel it. And yet you also got the impression that the great oak could fly, that it would be as quick as the wind, despite, or perhaps because of, its deep roots.”

“It's obvious which one you are,' Jimmy Hailler tells me as we walk through Hyde Park. 'If it's so obvious why can't I see it.' 'Because you live in your own world and can't see anything.' 'Then which one am I?' 'You're all four. You're constantly bitching things under your breath, you come across bloody stupid because you don't speak, on a particular angle in that uniform on an overcast day with your hair up, you've got that stocky butch thing happening, plus you're pashing other girl's boyfriends which makes you a slut.”

“Ho there, scribe. I see that you write well enough. Can you also read?''Obviously you cannot, boy,' he replied. 'For if you were able to read, you would see that my sign' -he pointed to a piece of paper pinned to the wall above his head - 'says: Reading and Writing - Careful and Discreet- the Sinistro Scribe.”