“So I ring Justine Kalinsky and I say, "It's Francesca Spinelli," and she says, "Francesca, you've got to stop using last names. How are you doing?" and I say "I feel like shit", and I don't know how it happens, but by eight o'clock that night I'm lying next to her on the couch with Siobhan and Tara and we're eating junk food and watching a Keanu movie. And I want to stay on that couch for the rest of my life.”

“She's tired and leans her head on his shoulder, which is the resting place for all their heads, but when Justine and Siobhan and Francesca use his body so shamelessly he doesn't feel the need to turn his head and press his mouth against their hair.”

“I'd like to think I'm Elizabeth, but deep down I think I'm the one whose name no one can remember. Not Lydia the slut or Mary the nerd or Jane the beauty or Elizabeth the opinionated. I'm the second-youngest. The forgotten one. - Francesca Spinelli”

“You shy, Francesca?” Javier asks me later on.I shake my head. “Not really.” I’m just sad, I want to say. And I’m lonely.”

“It's a weird smile, but it reaches his eyes and I bottle it. And I put it in my ammo pack that's kept right next to my soul and Justine's spirit and Siobhan's hope and Tara's passions. Because if I'm going to wake up one morning and not be able to get out of bed, I'm going to need everything I've got to fight this disease that could be sleeping inside of me.”

“Have you ever seen The Last of the Mohicans?""I love it.""Really?" I'm over the moon. We share a movie. Finally, we're on the same planet."Don't you love the part where he says, 'Stay alive. I will find you'?" I ask."I love that massacre scene," he says, like an excited little boy, "where they're walking down that path in the middle of nowhere and they're surrounded by the woods and you know the Indians are going to attack and it's so tense."Things that make you go hmmm.”

“There’s a moment in [Anne of Green Gables] where Anne Shirley (great character) […] is in the same classroom as Gilbert Blythe and she hit’s him over the head with a slate, which is their kind of writing tool, and I always say that moment for me was just, I was just absolutely mesmerised. I thought it was so romantic, though she hated his guts. I would always say that in every one of my novels there is a moment where my characters metaphorically hit their potential love interests over the head with a slate. It could be that winning an argument or getting the upper hand, an example in say The Piper’s Son could be here’s Tom thinking it will be easy, text messaging Tara saying ‘How’s it going, babe’ and her response, that for me is the hitting someone over the head with a slate. It happens in Saving Francesca when she kind of meets Will and Will’s such a bastard to her. So they’re moments I kind of adopted and I loved that particular one, so I would say [L.M. Montgomery] was a major influence.”