“Where did this come from? Do you know what this is? Luca is going to sneak out of bed in the middle of the night and squirt it on his tongue. It's like drugs for ten-year-olds. Today it's Ice Magic. Tomorrow, heroin.”

“she could have dropped you both off. whar's the worst she can do? cry hysterically?"the gears on the ute get stuck at the lights and will pushes tom's hand out of the way and and shoves it into the correct gear."it wasn't her" he mutters after a moment."sorry?" tom says."she didn't cry""then what?"it's too quiet except for the quiet for the crap engine sounding like a lawn mower."i cried"luca bursts out laughing beside will."yeah, well i did" will says. "And it's not the thing you want to do in front of a bunch on engineers.”

“I met this boy here who I knew as a kid and his mum left him with a pedophile for two weeks when he was eight years old and I'm presuming you know everything there is to know about Jonah's father, and that my father is dead, and my mother hasn't been around for years, and God knows Jessa's real story. So what I'm saying here, Sergeant, is that we're just a tad low on the reliable adult quota so you have no right to be all self-righteous about what Chaz did and if you're going to go around not talking to him when his only crime was wanting me to have what he has, then I think you're going to turn out to be a bit of a dud and you know something? I'm just a bit over life's little disappointments right now. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

“Taylor: Do you know when the next train to Yass is coming?Jonah: Go to hell.Taylor: Been there. Trust me. It's so overrated.”

“Your friends are at the house.'I sit up, straight. 'Who'?'I don't know. Weird people. The Sullivan girl, whose father got the Gosford police to pick you up.''Siobhan?''And another one who's making cups of tea for everyone, and keeping the boy who's telling Luca fart jokes away from the girl who says he's "the last bastion of patriarchal poor taste".''Justine, Thomas and Tara.'And the drug fiend, Jimmy, is keeping Mia calm and the Trombal boy's rung about ten times. I don't like his manner on the phone.''You won't like any guy's manner on the phone.”

“You know what? You didn't do anything wrong. I did. It's this dumb thing I do. I look into things and see more than I'm supposed to.”

“So we get a karaoke machine.On the first night, the year tens stage a competition, insisting that every member of the House has to be involved, so we clear the year-seven and -eight dorms and wait for our turn. Raffy is on second and does an impressive job of "I Can''t Live, If Living Means Without You" but then one of the seniors points out to her that she's chosen a dependency song and Raffy spends the whole night neuroticising about it."I just worked out that I don't have ambition," she says while one of the year eights sings tearfully, "Am I Not Pretty Enough?" I start compiling a list of all the kids I should be recommending to the school counsellor, based on their song choices."I think she's reading a little to much into it, Raf.""No she isn't. Because do you know what my second and third choices were? 'Don't Leave Me This Way' and 'I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself.'""Mary Grace chose 'Brown-eyed Girl' and she's got blue eyes and Serina sang 'It's Raining Men' and she's a lesbian. You're taking this way too seriously. Let it go.”