“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.”

“I sit down on the bed, cradling her little head against my shoulder, inhaling her sweet baby scent. Someday she'll get older, and the world will start having its way with her. She'll throw temper tantrums, she'll need speech therapy, she'll grow breasts and have pimples, she'll fight with her parents, she'll worry about her weight, she'll put out, she'll have her heart broken, she'll be happy, she'll be lonely, she'll be complicated, she'll be confused, she'll be depressed, she'll fall in love and get married, and she'll have a baby of her own. But right now she is pure and undiminished and beautiful.”

“Jordana is in the umpire's highchair.I walk under the rugby posts and on to the tennis courts, stopping a few metres in front of her, in the service box.Her legs are crossed.I wait for her to speak.'I have two special skills,' she says.She pulls a sheaf of papers from under her bum. I recognize the font and the text boxes. It's my pamphlet.'Blackmail,' she says.She holds up her Zippo in the other hand. I can tell that she has been practising this.'And pyromania.'I am impressed that Jordana knows this word.'Right,' I say.'I'm going to blackmail you, Ol.'I feel powerless. She is in a throne.'Okay,' I say.”

“...she'll cry, and if she does, I probably will, and then she'll have found a way in, and I will not let her pierce my walls in a Trojan horse of sympathy.”

“I think of her again. Anna. Anna Dressed in Blood. I wonder what tricks she'll try. I wonder if she'll be clever. Will she float? Will she laugh or scream?How will she try to kill me?”

“Whatever you give a woman, she will make greater. If you give her sperm, she'll give you a baby.. If you give her a house, she'll give you a home. If you give her groceries, she'll give you a meal. If you give her a smile, she'll give you her heart. She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her. So, if you give her any crap, be ready to receive a ton of shit!”

“She'll chase you aaround for a while but there's going to come a day when she'll stop running in circles around you and in that moment you'll wish you had caught her.”