“I bought a packet of Trojan® Ultra Pleasure Extra Sensitive condoms: ‘No. 1 in AMERICA’. They smell nothing like a positive first sexual experience.”

“I tell myself not to feel sexually threatened. I am of no special interest; he could just as easily be angling for the printer.”

“For my last birthday, Dad bought me a pocket-sized Collins English Dictionary. It would only fit in a pocket that had been specially designed.”

“Most people think of themselves as individuals, that there's no one on the planet like them. This thought motivates them to get out of bed, eat food and walk around like nothing's wrong. My name is Oliver Tate.”

“The next thing Jordana says makes me realize that it's too late to save her."I've noticed that when you light a match, the flame is the same shape as a falling tear." She's been sensitized, turned gooey in the middle. I saw it happening and I didn't do anything to stop it. From now on, she'll be writing diaries and sometimes including little poems and she'll buy gifts for her favourite teachers and she'll admire the scenery and she'll watch the news and she'll buy soup for homeless people and she'll never burn my leg hair again.”

“Anger does not come easy to me. It is something I have to encourage, like a greyhound in second place.”

“Problems are like top trumps. I have a pretty good card: Adulterous Mum. But Jordana's is still better: Tumour Mother.”