“Not that I'd really been planning on keeping the attack secret; it had just been an option I'd wanted to keep open if I could.”

“It was sort of the pattern to my life - I'd never been strong enough to deal with the things outside my control, to attack the enemies or outrun them. To avoid the pain. Always human and weak, the only thing I'd ever been able to do was keep going. Endure. Survive.”

“So I was for stories. I was for stries just as gannets were for balls of silver-flashing fish - I'd crash towards them, gaping. I'd try for as many as I could. And I'd keep them safe like feathers in a vase... They have been my comfort. My family. My strange nourishment.”

“After all that I'd been through, after all that I'd learned and all that I'd been given, I was going to do what I had been doing every day for the last few years now: just show up and do the best that I could do with whatever lay in front of me.”

“She was mine, had always been, and I'd always been hers. Despite what I'd done, the wounds I'd inflicted, she had always been mine.... our hearts had been tied, our bond one that neither of us could ever escape.”

“I knew I had to keep him to myself, as I'd slowly begun to keep everything. We had secrets now, truths and half-truths, that kept her always at arm's length, behind a closed door, miles away.”