“And we all end up where we started”

“A piece of me is gone," she told me once while we were bra shopping. "I think we're made up of all these different pieces and every time someone goes, you're left with less of yourself.”

“It’s all a bit of a gamble, mate. That’s all I can promise you.And we never get to see what that other life would have looked like if we don’t take chances.”

“In the end, the sum of my vices is all me.”

“Between now and when we graduate next year there are at least ten weeks' holiday and five random public holidays. There's email and if you manage to get down to the town, there's text messaging and mobile phone calls. If not, the five minutes you get to speak to me on your communal phone is better than nothing. There are the chess nerds who want to invite you to our school for the chess comp next March and there's this town in the middle, planned by Walter Burley Griffin, where we can meet up and protest against our government's refusal to sign the Kyoto treaty.”

“Brothers always. Balthazar is with us too. We make this work,' Finnikin said fiercely. 'We bring peace to these kingdoms. We deserve it. Our women do. All of us have lost too much, Froi. We've lost the joy of being children. Let's not take that from Jasmina and Tariq and those who come after them”

“In the games of queens and kings, we leave our dreams at the door and we make do with what we have. Sometimes if we’re fortunate, we still manage to have a good life.”