“Then what happens? Diana demanded“Then were hit with massive doeses of radiation. It’s invisible, but its like someone is shooting tiny bullets at you. They blow millions of tiny holes through your body. You get sick. Your hair falls out. You vomit. You die”

“Cause if you shoot a bullet someone dies. If you drop a bomb many die. You hit a woman, love dies. But if you say the F-word... nothing actually happens.”

“The world was full of holes, tiny apertures of meaninglessness, microscopic rifts that the mind could walk through, and once you were on the other side of one of those holes, you were free of yourself, free of your life free of your death, free of everything that belonged to you.”

“It’s what happens when you shoot someone,” Wayne pointed out. “At least, usually someone has the good sense to get dead when you go to all the trouble to shoot them.”

“You don't fall in love like you fall in a hole. You fall like falling through space. It’s like you jump off your own private planet to visit someone else’s planet. And when you get there it all looks different: the flowers, the animals, the colours people wear. It is a big surprise falling in love because you thought you had everything just right on your own planet, and that was true, in a way, but then somebody signalled to you across space and the only way you could visit was to take a giant jump. Away you go, falling into someone else’s orbit and after a while you might decide to pull your two planets together and call it home. And you can bring your dog. Or your cat. Your goldfish, hamster, collection of stones, all your odd socks. (The ones you lost, including the holes, are on the new planet you found.)And you can bring your friends to visit. And read your favourite stories to each other. And the falling was really the big jump that you had to make to be with someone you don’t want to be without. That’s it.PS You have to be brave.”

“That’s a funny thing: you think, when awful things happen, everything else just stops, like you would forget to pee and eat and get thirsty, but it’s not really true. It’s like you and your body are two separate things, like your body is betraying you, chugging on, idiotic and animal, craving water and sandwiches and bathroom breaks while your world falls apart.”