“Unexpectedly, a fierce sense of protectiveness comes over me. Except I fight it back because I can hardly look after myself these days.”

“I remember love. It's what I have to keep on reminding myself. It's funny how you can forget everything except people loving you. Maybe that's why humans find it so hard getting over love affairs. It's not the pain they're getting over, it's the love.”

“And then you came along and you spoke to me and nobody had looked me in the eye for years. (...) But I remember you that day and you looked at peace with yourself and it made me reconsider everything I had planned to do. Because I thought to myself, you can't do this to her, not after the Hermit thing.""Do what to me? I don't think leaving me on that platform would have changed my life, Griggs," I lie."You being on that platform changed mine.”

“As I walk back to the school on my own, I realise I'm crying. So I go back to the stories I've read about the five and I try to make sense of their lives because in making sense of theirs, I may understand mine.”

“I do keep him at the back of my mind for those times I get me hopes raised about something. So then I can slap myself into reality and remind myself of what happens when you let someone into your sacred space.”

“I stand up and walk towards her because my days of waiting for more are over. If I want more, I need to go and get it, demand it, take hold of it with all my might, and do the best I can with it.”

“I reach the bottom and smash into him with my fists as hard as I can. He falls and I can't believe he goes down that easy, caught off balance."You care about nothing, you piece of shit!"I'm on the verge of tears, like I always seem to be these days, and I hear the catch in my voice and I hate myself for it. He throws me off him and I can tell there is a fury in him."Never," he tells me in a tone full of ice, "under-estimate who or what I care for.”