“She put up her posters, which mainly consisted of one five-foot-wide panorama of Diego Luna doing a split on the set of Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights-which Penelope had decided would be an excellent conversation topic, because that is a movie everyone likes.”

“Singin' in the Rain was most excellent if you like movies where people burst into song and tap-dance. Which I do, though not as much as I like movies where people don't.”

“ You would be forgiven for thinking Alex Morningside was a boy. In fact, she would be the first to laugh at this, because, for one thing, she wasn't, and for another, she had an Excellent Sense of Humour. It wasn't that she wanted to be a boy or anything, it was simply that she didn't see much difference in being treated as a girl or boy. Because, after all, everyone is just people. One of the reasons people thought she was a boy was her haircut. Her haircut looked like someone had put a bowl on her head and cut around it. Which is exactly what her uncle had done. Also, they thought she was a boy because her name was Alex. Of course, Alex was short for Alexandra, but neither Alex nor her uncle liked that very much, so they shortened the name. They could have shortened it the other was I suppose - Andra - but she and her uncle preferred Alex.”

“Her eyes watered and she was a foot taller than any of her sisters, mostly because of the length of her neck which would one day hang from the end of a rope.”

“Hello' said a vague and dreamy voice from behind them. Harry looked up: Luna Lovegood had drifted over from the Ravenclaw table. Many people were staring at her and few people openly laughing and pointing; she had managed to procure a hat shaped like a life-size lion's head, which was perched precariously on her head.'I'm supporting Gryffindor' said Luna, pointing unnecessarily at her hat. "Look what it does...'She reached up and tapped the hat with her wand. It opened its mouth wide and gave an extremely realistic roar that made everyone in the vicinity jump.'It's good, isn't it?' said Luna happily. 'I wanted to have it chewing up a serpent to represent Slytherin, you know, but there wasn't time. Anyway...good luck, Ronald!”

“Midland City had a goddess of discord all its own. This was a goddess who could not dance, would not dance, and hated everybody at the high school. She would like to claw away her face, she told us, so that people would stop seeing things in it that had nothing to do with what she was like inside. She was ready to die at any time, she said, because what men and boys thought about her and tried to do to her made her so ashamed. One of the first things she was going to do when she got to heaven, she said, was to ask somebody what was written on her face and why had it been put there.”