“Well-meanin' man. Did it all for the best." Stalky curled gracefully round the stair-rail. "Head in a drain-pipe. Full confession in the left boot.”

“Inside, I'm doing graceful cartwheels in my head, knowing full well that's the only place I can do graceful cartwheels.”

“Stalky,' in their school vocabulary, meant clever, well-considered and wily, as applied to plans of action; and 'stalkiness' was the one virtue Corkran toiled after.”

“Halfway down the stairs, is a stair, where I sit. There isn't any, other stair, quite like, it. I'm not at the bottom, I'm not at the top; So this is the stair, where, I always, stop. Halfway up the stairs, isn't up, and isn't down. It isn't in the nursery, it isn't in the town. And all sorts of funny thoughts, run round my head: It isn't really anywhere! It's somewhere else instead!”

“They're terrified of us Firefly, all of them are.""Well, good," I replied, forming a tiny ball of flames in my fingertips, which were curled round the handle on the back of the bike. "They should be.”

“The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ.”