“Privately, I consider religion to be a load of bollocks, but when you have a sobbing five year old wanting to know what happened to her hamster, you develop an instant belief in anything that dissolves some of the heartbreak off her face.”

“I had that feeling you have when you're watching a sad movie, sobbing at the heartbreak you are feeling at the same time that you know the heartbreak isn't exactly real, that it will be gone by the time you get home and make a cup of tea. I found a lot of life like that when I was younger, as though I was practicing for what came later.”

“Were you playing with Stuart?" she asked.The question was loaded. I was a filthy, filthy woman, and even the five-year-old knew it.”

“Don't you see?" he said. "This could go on for another five years, another ten years, and then where would we be? You want to grow old waiting for something that's never going to happen? Is that what you want?”

“When anybody, no matter how old they are, loses a parent, I think it hurts the same as if you were only five years old, you know? I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.”

“I look up at Eric,sniffing "I tried to...and..."I shake my head. "You tired to what?" asks Eric"Kiss me," says Tobias. "And I rejected her,and she went running off like a five-year-old. there's really nothing to blame her for but stupidity.”