“Left alone with the dial tone...excuse me, operator, why is no one listening?”

“Never,' he tells me in a tone full of ice, 'underestimate who or what I care for.”

“Back in Georgie's attic, he yanks the phone out of the socket and begins scrolling down the names under dialed calls, praying to anyone who will listen. God. Baby Jesus. Saint Thomas the doubter. Saint Whoever, patron saint of losers. Praying, Please, please, don't let it be true.The first name shatters him.The second makes his head spin.”

“One of Sir Topher's rules was to never indulge in sentimentality, never return for what was left behind.”

“What about the contacts your mum had?” his dad asked.“I rang and spoke to four very polite computers who gave me all these options and then cut out on me. Then I tried the post office, because they were advertising, and I spoke to another computer. Very rude, that one. Don’t think it recognized ‘Are you shitting me?’ as an option.”“You know why that is?”“Why is that, Dominic?” Tom had asked drolly, because he knew he was going to be told why.“Because we don’t live in a society anymore, Tom. We live in an economy. We’re not citizens. We’re customers. That’s what this government’s done to us.”

“So why would I want someone to be my everything when one day they might not be around?”

“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.”