“All unwillingly I opened my eyes - then I opened them wider, and lifted my head. The heat, my weariness, were quite forgotten. Piercing the shadows of the naked stage was a single shaft of rosy limelight, and in the centre of this there was a girl: the most marvellous girl - I knew it at once! - that I had ever seen.”

“Once again, I was reminded that Tally was the prettiest girl I'd ever met, and when she smiled at me my mind went blank. Once you've seen a pretty girl naked, you feel a certain attachment to her.”

“When I see her,” I said, “it’s like - I don’t know what it’s like. It’s like I never saw anything at all before. It’s like I am filling up, like a wine-glass when it’s filled with wine. I watch the acts before her and they are like nothing - they’re like dust. Then she walks on the stage and - she is so pretty; and her suit is so nice; and her voice is so sweet… She makes me want to smile and weep, at once. She makes me sore, here.” I placed a hand upon my chest, upon the breast-bone. “I never saw a girl like her before. I never knew that there were girls like her…” My voice became a trembling whisper then, and I found that I could say no more. There was another silence. I opened my eyes and looked at Alice - and knew at once that I shouldn’t have spoken; that I should have been as dumb and as cunning with her as with the rest of them. There was a look on her face - it was not ambiguous at all now - a look of mingled shock, and nervousness, and embarrassment or shame. I had said too much. I felt as if my admiration for Kitty Butler had lit a beacon inside me, and opening my unguarded mouth had sent a shaft of light into the darkened room, illuminating all. I had said too much - but it was that, or say nothing.”

“My mind/a twist of clutter/ as i lie in bed imagining my life/ I watch the shadows on the ceiling./Memories sail across my eyes. / I need courage to see them. / I fight with myself/But then I close my eyes to the twilight/ And release myself to sleep.The scars you can't see are the hardest to heal.I'd rather be lucky than good. Good is just so overrated. Bad girls have the most fun.A fool empties his head every time he opens his mouth”

“I was very aware that you were a girl, Ash. I was just scared because the one person in the world who knew every secret I'd ever had also happened to be the most beautiful girl I'd ever known. My feelings for you were scary as Hell.”

“Why couldn’t I stop being an asshole for two seconds? Oh that’s right, because my insides were currently a flipping mess because of a sudden realisation that my best friend was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.”