“Racism does not have a good track record. It's been tried out for a long time and you'd think by now we'd want to put an end to it instead of putting it under new management. ”

“It was the world-without-adults daydream. In my dream I'd never quite figured out where the adults went but we kids were free to roam, to help ourselves to anything we wanted. We'd pick up a Merc from a showroom when we wanted wheels, and when it ran out of petrol we'd get another one. We'd change cars the way I change socks. We'd sleep in different mansions every night, going to new houses instead of putting new sheets on the beds. Life would be one long party.Yes, that had been the dream.”

“Would you like to hear my story, Bella? It doesn't have a happy ending - but which of ours does? If we had happy endings, we'd all be under gravestones now.”

“If we'd put them in a vase in the living room, they would have been everyone's flowers. I wanted them to be my flowers.”

“In the end, all you want is someone to long for you when it comes time to put you in the ground.”

“That long-gone sense of innocence and trust now reminded her of the feeling she now had when about to put on a new dress, or when given a box of chocolates sealed up in its wrapper. Everything was lovely in the anticipation. There must have been a time, she thought wistfully, when disappointment was an undiscovered emotion. ”