“Instinct tells me to go to Hannah's, but she doesn't live there anymore and that's when I realize the major difference between my mother and Hannah. My mother deserted me at the 7-Eleven, hundred of kilometers away from home.Hannah, however, did the unforgivable.She deserted me in our own backyard.”

“This is what I know. I look like my father. My father disappeared when he was seventeen years old. Hannah once told me that there is something unnatural about being older than your father ever got to be. When you can say that at the age of seventeen, it's a different kind of devastating.”

“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.”

“And secondly, losing your virginity doesn't make you a slut. I slept with your father when I was your age. . . ''Mia,' my father roared from the other room.'What? So we're going to lie to her now,?' she shouted back.He walked in. 'What if your mother finds out? Or my mother?''Robert, it was twenty years ago. I don't think there's much they can do.'He looked at me, pointing a finger. 'No sex for you.' He used the Soup Nazi's accent from Seinfeld.”

“If I had to wish for something, just one thing, it would be that Hannah would never see Tate the way I did. Never see Tate's beautiful, lush hair turn brittle, her skin sallow, her teeth ruined by anything she could get her hands on that would make her forget. That Hannah would never count how many men there were, or how vile humans can be to one another. That she would never see the moments in my life that were full of neglect, and fear, and revulsion, moments I can never go back to because I know they will slow me down for the rest of my life if I let myself remember them for one moment. Tate, who had kept Hannah alive that night, reading her the story of Jem Finch and Mrs. Dubose. And suddenly I know I have to go. But this time without being chased by the Brigadier, without experiencing the kindness of a postman from Yass, and without taking along a Cadet who will change the way I breath for the rest of my life.”

“My old school, St Stella’s, only goes to Year Ten and most of my friends now go to Pius Senior College, but my mother wouldn’t allow it because she says the girls there leave with limited options and she didn’t bring me up to have limitations placed upon me. If you know my mother, you’ll sense there’s an irony there, based on the fact that she is the Queen of the Limitation Placers in my life.”

“What happens when she's not my memory anymore? What happens when she's not around to tell me about his belt leaving scars across my two-year-old brother's face or when he whacked her so hard that she lost her hearing for a week? Who'll be my memory?"Santangelo doesn't miss a beat. "I will. Ring me.""Same," Raffy says.I look at him. I can't even speak because if I do I know I'll cry but I smile and he knows what I'm thinking.”