“Well, we're meant to be writing stories today,”

“Mother used to say it meant Christopher was a nice name because it was a story about being kind and helpful, but I do not want my name to mean a story about being kind and helpful. I want my name to mean me.”

“That was what it meant, didn’t it. Being good. You didn’t have to sink wells in Burkina Faso. You didn’t have to give away your coffee table. You just had to see things from other people’s point of view. Remember they were human.”

“All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I'm not meant to call them stupid, even though this is what they are.”

“I liked maths because it meant solving problems, and these problems were difficult and interesting but there was always a straightforward answer at the end”

“... a rhetorical question. It has a question mark at the end, but you are not meant to answer it because the person who is asking it already knows the answer.”

“I did know what it meant when you say you promise something. You have to say that you will never do something again and then you must never do it because that would make the promise a lie.”