“Tourists, a lot of them, wearing unfamiliar faces. There is something subtly different about them, like they're a different species...They're related to us like Dove is related to the water horses.”

“The hardest thing is being with other people - it's like they're on a different wavelenght, but only you know it. They talk about their lives and what's wrong with them, and you kind of, like, just let them go. It's a whole different language, and you've got to remember that you can only respond in their mother tongue. It's really hard to relate.”

“Her accent's funny, different from mine, different from anyone in Prentisstown's. Her lips make different kinds of outlines for the letters, like they're swooping down on them from above, pushing them into shape, telling them what to say. In Prentisstown, everyone talks like they're sneaking up on their words, ready to club them from behind.”

“We like to think of our champions and idols as superheroes who were born different from us. We don’t like to think of them as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary.”

“You want to know the truth about the poor in this country? They're not cool. They're not soulful. They're not honest. They're not the salt of the fucking earth. They're thick. They're myopic. They're violent. They're drunk most of the time. They like shit music. They wear shit clothes. They tell shit jokes. They're racist, most of them, and homophobic, the lot of them. They have tiny parameters of possibility and a minuscule spirit of enquiry or investigation. They would be better off staying in their little holes and fucking each other. And killing each other.”

“The ordinary and the unordinary are closely related. The difference is the subjective view of them.”