“I think about stories and their logic and wonder if there can be any such thing as simply "there is a book.”

“I wonder if the reason I tend to say yes to everything is because I deeply believe that I can survive anything.”

“If you threw a brick at someone you would be responsible for them feeling pain, presumably,' Libby said. 'But if you do the right thing and it makes someone feel bad, isn't that their problem? Then again, how do you even know what the right thing is? Who decides?' 'It's so confusing. I am sure about Mark, but I was sure about Bob before that, and Richard before that. Maybe Mark isn't for ever, I just think he is now when I can't have him. I have to face up to this about myself. I fall in love like that.' She clicked her fingers. 'I always have. For other people, love is like some rare orchid that can only grow in one place under a certain set of conditions. For me it's like bindweed. It grows with no encouragement at all, under any conditions, and just strangles everything else. Good metaphor, huh?”

“I don’t have bionic arms, and I have absolutely no stamina. Once I rubbed out the penciled-in marginalia of a hundred pages of a book that I wanted to photocopy (long story) and afterwards it felt like I’d been wanking off a giant for a hundred years.”

“One minute I was playing chess and doing maths all the time, the next I had been rerouted into more 'normal' girls' activities: reading, writing stories and worrying about my clothes.”

“I realised that when someone plays hard to get, they are making themselves into a character in a story, and they choose the story that leads to the outcome they want.”

“But I quite like the way you can talk about science without necessarily using mathematics, but using metaphors instead.”