“Deborah felt his erection against her stomach and smiled up at him. She grabbed hold of his bum and moved him gently from side to side so that it rocked against her, twitching like Frankenstein's monster in an electric storm.”

“Sometimes when we were hiding behind the breakers with the crowd, he'd hold me so tight, I'd think he's not just holding me, he's holding onto me, like I'm stopping him from falling off. I'd see him looking at me and his eyes were so full of...I dunno. Like he was about to cry. And, it's stupid, I know, but I think maybe he's hurting because he loves me and I don't love him, and this great lump used to come up into my throat and I'd hold him tight and try and squeeze him as tight as I could and try as hard as I could to fall in love with him the way he loved me.And then other times I'd think, it's just the way his face is that makes him look like that.”

“That's her secret, I suppose. Everything that happens to her she's proud of. She makes it special by it happening to her.”

“She didn't have to be offered anything; it was already hers. She was more herself than anyone else ever was and as soon as I clapped eyes on her I knew I wanted to be myself just as much as she was herself.”

“He'd come back, all open and helpless, and I suppose that's what won her around in the end. But it was so sad, because it was being himself that he found so difficult to cope with.”

“The magic girl licked the wet off her arms and looked over to me as if to say, See? You don't have to behave like them, you don't have to behave like anyone.”

“Sex is . . . well, it’s so rude, isn’t it? You wouldn’t think girls would like sex. You’d think it’s too rude for them. Doing sex with a girl, it’s a bit like putting a frog down their backs or scaring them with dead mice or throwing worms at them. They’re such sensible, grown-up sorts of people. And yet apparently even the nice ones like you sticking the rudest thing you have on your whole body up the exact, rudest part of their body that they have. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me!”