“It came to him that he didn't like holidays. . . . They bore down on you. Each one always ended up feeling like an exam . . .”

“Henry went down on one knee. 'Like King Arthur's knights,' Mr. Fogarty had told him, but he didn't feel much like a knight. In fact he felt like a twit.”

“I want to tell him that deep down each time Hannah looked at him she was grateful it was him because Jude did something that the others didn't. He came back for her.”

“He didn't like it all that much when he first came - all the rubbish and the rush - but it was growing on him, it wasn't half bad. Coming to the city was like entering a tunnel, he said, and finding to your surprise that the light at the end didn't matter; sometimes in fact the tunnel made the light tolerable.”

“A man came up to me the other day and said he hadn't had a bite in weeks. So you know what I did? I walked by him like he didn't even exist.”

“See, this was the thing with Qhuinn. He could be out there and he could let his edge get away from him, but he always came back and made you feel like you were the single most important person in the world to him and that he was truly sorry for hurting your feelings.”