I couldn’t remember anyone hugging me like that before.

Sometimes I can see colour without opening my eyes. I saw that Billy’s heart was no colour and every colour. Like water or diamonds or crystals, it’s pure and reflects the light.

She reminded me of the sea; the way she came dancing towards you, wild and beautiful, and just when she was almost close enough to touch she’d rush away again.

Sometimes words come out of me and I don’t know where they come from or why. They’re like falling stars tumbling through the universe; bright, burning things that can’t be stopped.

… I’ll tell her about Tia. I’ll tell her how beautiful she was and how brave. And I’ll tell her the most important thing of all: that her mother loved her better than her life.

I saw pearls in her mouth and the velvet cushion of her tongue and I heard the magic words come out of her.

Then I kissed Max because I loved him, and everyone I had ever loved before had gone away and I had never kissed them goodbye.

I didn’t understand right away what she meant. But her words soaked through my skull like warm oil, behind my eyes, down my spine and into the empty space inside me.

I didn’t know what to say when someone’s given you a small free kiss in the dark …

You don’t tell anyone things like that about your friends, even when you’re mad at them.

Sometimes it’s better to live without a mother than not to live at all.

You might think what I tell you next is all a dream, or that I’ve imagined it. I can’t help it if that’s what you think, but I swear it’s true. Sometimes the truest things...

Through the night we drove in a tangle of waking and sleeping, nightmares from hell and holy white dreams.

He was like a shattered stained-glass window: something beautiful that’s broken; a million colours fallen on the ground where no light can get through.

We walked back the way we came, and even though it was dark there were no lights burning inside the houses. They were like people without hearts; raspberry tarts without the jam.

… we sat back and let the moon shine itself all over her, and we saw that Tia was full of light. Billy said that when we die the darkness leaves us.’We’re pure and perfect...

But saying stuff, even if it’s good, isn’t enough. Dad never did anything, he just talked about it. Even I knew you needed plans.

The girl danced like light on water. After I’d watched for a while I looked with all of me, not just my eyes, and then I saw the meaning of the dance. I wanted to...

… and all we knew about her that we didn’t know the night before was that she had eyes like pansies and skin like the moon.

Maybe if the empty space inside her was filled with love there’d be no room for sad and dark things.

..so Grandpa turned the rusty latchkey of his magnificent remembery and set free a symphony of stories

I know that sentence is long and has too many joining words in it but sometimes, when I’m angry, words burst out of me like a shout, or, if I’m sad, they spill out of...

I couldn’t tell what colour her eyes were. They were wet and dark and shining, like pools of deep, still water. For a second I thought I could see pictures in them, like I was...