Taylor, what about the Brigadier who came searching for you that day? Whatever became of him?” I try to explain that the Brigadier is of no importance to my story, but he always shakes his...

Then he holds her and for a moment I hear total silence; that totally silent part of a cry that announces that the most horrible grief is going to follow. And it does, and he’s...

I hear Mr. Palmer tell Hannah that it was an electrical fault. Five arsonists in one school and it ends up being something so technically boring.

Imagine the state of one’s mind if they were to recall its details. All those months cocooned and then the onslaught of this ugly world. Lights and noise and strangeness. It’s no wonder we scream...

My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die.I counted.It happened on the Jellicoe Road. The prettiest road I’d ever seen, where trees made breezy canopies like a tunnel to Shangri-La. We were going...

Today this courtyard was filled with great warriors. What is more? But it was not filled with great men who have the heart to rule a kingdom. Any man can kill, Finnikin. It is a...

When one is silent, those around speak even more, my lord.

His voice is deep and gravelly. I once heard one of the girls say that he had the voice of a sex god, but because I’ve never really heard what a sex god sounds like,...

The music department is going to do a musical next year,” he tells me, rolling his eyes like I would.Justine is running toward me, and I can tell by the look on her face that...

I still wake with your name on my lips every morning.

Mama says that satisfaction isn’t what I should search for. Respect is. Respect?I detest that word. Probably because in this world you have to respect the wrong people for the wrong reasons.

I’ve wept enough in my life. I have no tears left.

I didn’t know you had a girlfriend, Griggs.” Anson Choi feigns surprise. “What’s her name?””I didn’t actually catch her name,” Griggs continues.”Lily,” Raffaela says over her shoulder and this time I give her a sideways...

She knows that feeling too. Of believing that each time someone says her name, it’s to tell her that something bad has happened.

Forty’s the new thirty,” they’d joke.Until heartbreak and grief enter your life, and then forty’s the new one hundred.

I trace his face with my fingers, ‘Let me see. A guy tells me that he would have thrown himself in front of a train if it wasn’t for me and then drives seven hours...

But then Froi looked back to where his work lay unfinished and it made him sad because there had been something about the touch of earth in his hands that made him feel worthwhile.

A piece of me is gone,” she told me once while we were bra shopping. “I think we’re made up of all these different pieces and every time someone goes, you’re left with less of...

The depression belongs to all of us. I think of the family down the road whose mother was having a baby and they went around the neighborhood saying, “We’re pregnant.” I want to go around...

Just ask how I’m feeling, I want to say. Just ask and I may tell you.But no one does.

Who knows.

I wantto kill a Charynite King” tattooed on my arse?

Lucian’s father had warned him to fear idle men. Without the pride gained from a good day’s work, they were left to their vices and the doubts that crowded their head. Their hatred. Their envy.

He just watched the way Finnikin’s hands rested on Evanjalin’s neck and he rubbed his thumb along her jaw and the way his tongue seemed to disappear inside her mouth as if he needed a...

she could have dropped you both off. whar’s the worst she can do? cry hysterically?”the gears on the ute get stuck at the lights and will pushes tom’s hand out of the way and and...

He is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen and it’s not about his face, but the life force I can see in him. It’s the smile and the pure promise of everything he...

It’s all rather political, mourning is.

I don’t despise you for what you allowed to happen to me. I despise you because when I was released, you refused to be found and I needed you more than anything in my life....

Do you love me?’ he asked instead. ‘Because if you don’t, I’d wait until you did. I’d wait weeks and months and years.

I determine my own worth. If I had to rely on others, I’d have lain down and died waiting.

Do you want to know something about tyrants? When faced with death, they weep and they beg just like the rest of us.

And suddenly I know I have to go. But this time without being chased by the Brigadier, without experiencing the kindness of a postman from Yass, and without taking along a Cadet who will change...

You can’t go around feeling too much.

I like looking at his face when he speaks. Sometimes he spit, actually he spits all the time, but I think that’s passionate. He loves words and he rolls them around in his mouth like...

Bloody bastards. One minute punching each other, next minute reading poetry. What’s wrong with everyone this week?”Tom can tell that

He knows bad days. Bad days take him completely by surprise. They make him not trust the good days because it’s likely something is lurking twenty-four hours away.

If there was one weapon he had against these savages, it was not acknowledging their existence.

And won’t he grow up to be the healthiest of young men, all because she kept him safe? Ready for the world. Ready to one day conquer it. To travel. Get on a train. Go...