“He "had developed a trick in college for speaking with authority. He believed that breaking his argument into numbers forced people to pay attention. How you said something could be more important than what you said.”

“And do I still have that look?" he asked."Yes just there," she kissed his eye. "The desire to love me is still there. If you look closely you can see mine for you, my tears never washed it away.”

“I was touched that he'd brought me here. I didn't know what to say. Up until then there was a part of me that wondered if maybe there was nothing more to him than an aura of danger and a disposable charm that he used to keep himself from getting into too much trouble. I was beginning to realize that like everyone else, he was searching for something, and like everyone else, he had no idea where he could find it.Thanks for bringing me here," I said. " It really means a lot me."Does it?" he asked. He seemed genuinely surprised by this. "I'm glad. I wasn't sure if you'd get it. I thought maybe you'd think it was creepy."No," I said quickly. "Not at all. I like that there's these different parts to you."Good," he said, smiling. "It's hard to show people everything, you know? You never know what they'll do with it once they have it.”

“He owns them more completely than if he had seized their balls in his hands”

“And it's not like you never do anything wrong ever, is it?' said Marcus. 'I mean...' He had to be careful here. He knew he couldn't say too much or even anything at all about the hospital stuff. 'I mean how come I got to know Will in the first place?'Because you threw a bloody great baguette at a duck's head and killed it, basically,' said Will.”

“Do you need someone to talk to?" she said gently. "Oh. Thank you. No, no, I'm fine." He touched his face – he'd been crying harder than he'd realized. "You sure? You don't look fine." "No, really. I've just . . . I've just had a very intense emotional experience." He held out one of his iPod headphones, as if that would explain it. "On here." "You're crying about music?" The woman looked at him as if he were some kind of pervert. "Well," said Duncan. "I'm not crying about it. I'm not sure that's the right preposition." She shook her head and walked off.”

“It's only just beginning to occur to me that it's important to have something going on somewhere, at work or at home, otherwise you're just clinging on. [...] You need as much ballast as possible to stop you floating away; you need people around you, things going on, otherwise life is like some film where the money ran out, and there are no sets, or locations, or supporting actors, and it's just one guy on his own staring into the camera with nothing to do and nobody to speak to, and who'd believe in this character then? I've got to get more stuff, more clutter, more detail in here, because at the moment I'm in danger of falling off the edge.”