“Perfection is a moving target”

“Fear is the price we pay for love.”

“Love is blind, they say--but isn't it more that love makes us see too much? Isn't it more that love floods our brain with sights and sounds, so that everything looks bigger, brighter, more lovely than ever before?”

“What if...? A question we ask to hurt ourselves.”

“Love is as varied and unpredictable as the rain is: it comes in constant summer drizzles, or sudden, unforseen storms that make rivers burst their banks and Cornish fishing boats rock and spill and lose their crew in the Atlantic.”

“No trains. No traffic noise. At night, my mother's old bedroom was so dark I couldn't tell if I'd shut my eyes or not.”

“Mr Phipps seemed to think criminality was passed down through the generations like a stutter, or a squint, or in my case red hair.”