“In order to have a change of fortune at the last minute, you have to take your fortune to the last minute.”

“There is always time for another last minute”

“And what are you doing on it, I would like to know? Running away from home, yesno? If you were a boy I'd say are you going to seek your fortune?""Can't girls seek their fortune?""I think they're supposed to seek a boy with a fortune.”

“Would a minute have mattered? No, probably not, although his young son appeared to have a very accurate internal clock. Possibly even 2 minutes would be okay. Three minutes, even. You could go to five minutes, perhaps. But that was just it. If you could go for five minutes, then you'd go to ten, then half an hour, a couple of hours...and not see your son all evening. So that was that. Six o'clock, prompt. Every day. Read to young Sam. No excuses. He'd promised himself that. No excuses. No excuses at all. Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses.”

“The thing about stories is you have to pick the ones that last.”

“Last hopeless chances have got to work. Nothing makes sense otherwise. You might as well not be alive.”

“The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.”