“Stani walks in later, glaring at them both.“Bloody bastards. One minute punching each other, next minute reading poetry. What’s wrong with everyone this week?”Tom can tell that”

“Sometimes I feel like a junkie. One minute something happens in my life and I'm flying. Next minute I take a nose-dive and just as I'm about to hit the ground with full force something else will have me flying again.”

“Fifteen minutes later I was an expert. That's all you need. I think I was even getting the upper hand, which is very simple with a guy. Anything seems to turn them on.”

“Even five minutes of your time can make someone’s day,”

“When your're both finished trying to frighten each other away with the sordidness of your pasts, can you help me, please?”

“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.”

“But you're almost eighteen. You're old enough. Everyone else is doing it.And next year someone is going to say to someone else 'but you're only sixteen, everyone else is doing it' Or one day someone will tell your daughter that she's only thirteen and everyone else is doing it. I don't want to do it because everyone else is doing it.”