A bully with charisma and top marks is still a bully. He’ll probably end up Prime Minister one day. God help us all.

I was a hugely unchaperoned reader, and I would wander into my local public library and there sat the world, waiting for me to look at it, to find out about it, to discover who...

Ready to grow up, Todd?” the Mayor asks.

Todd?”And Aaron wrenches his arms and there’s a CRACK and a scream and a cut-off yelp that tears my heart in two forever and forever.And the pain is too much it’s too much it’s too...

His absence is so big it’s like he’s there.

Ah, well, then you’ve never stood on a beach as the waves came crashing in, the water stretching out from you until it’s beyond sight, moving and blue and alive and so much bigger than...

Poo,” Manchee’s says quietly.

Choices may be unbelievably hard but they’re never impossible. To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that’s not how a person with integrity acts.

Besides, what was more perfect an object than a book? The different rags of paper, smooth or rough under your fingers. The edge of the page pressed into your thumbprint as you turned a new...

It’s not how we fall. It’s how we get back up again.

And then his noise falls completely silent-And he stops struggling-And looking right into my eyes-He dies.My Todd dies.

He answered the phone to his daughter with a broken but joyous heart, ready to speak with her of astonishment and wonder.

Free, I think. They’re free.(is this why she joined them?)I feel so-So relieved.I pick up the pace as I near the opening, my hands gripping my rifle but I have a feeling I ain’t gonna...

… a good idea always attracts other good ideas.

Cuz how do you know yer alive if you don’t hurt?

I wanted so badly for there to be more. I ached for there to be more than my crappy little life.’ He shakes his head. ‘And there was more. I just couldn’t see it.

What a sad thing men are. Can’t do nothing good without being so weak we have to mess it up. Can’t build something up without tearing it down.

He is sorry-For everything-For Prentisstown-For Viola-For Ben-For every failure and every wrong-For letting his pa down-And he’s looking up at me-And he’s begging me-He’s begging me-Like I’m the only one who can forgive him-Like it’s...

You won’t,” says the Mayor, smiling again. “Everyone knows you aren’t a killer, Todd.”He pushes Viola forward again -She calls out from the pain of it -Viola, I think -Viola -I grit my teeth and...

He’s seeing the actual Milky Way streaked across the sky. The whole of his entire galaxy, right there in front of him. Billions and billions of stars. Billions and billions of worlds. All of them,...

Librarians are tour-guides for all of knowledge.

Stories are important, the monster said. They can be more important than anything. If they carry the truth.

You be as angry as you need to be,” she said. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Not your grandma, not your dad, no one. And if you need to break things, then by God,...

It’s a girl,” I say.It’s a girl.

And if one day,’ she said, really crying now, ‘you look back and you feel bad for being so angry, if you feel bad for being so angry at me that you couldn’t even speak...

And right on cue, Viola yells, ” TODD!”And I hit him with everything I got -Every bit of her behind me -Every piece of anger and frustrayshun and nothingness -Every moment I didn’t see her...

Everybody was hoping for something, talking about our new life to come and all that they hoped from it. Fresh air, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Real gravity, instead of the fake kind that broke...

Stories are the wildest things of all. Stories chase and bite and hunt.

Stories don’t always have happy endings.”This stopped him. Because they didn’t, did they? That’s one thing the monster had definitely taught him. Stories were wild, wild animals and went off in directions you couldn’t expect.

It’s not that you should never love something so much that it can control you.It’s that you need to love something that much so you can never be controlled.It’s not a weakness.It’s your best strength.

HEREIt’s-Can I say?It’s like the song of a family where everything’s always all right, it’s a song of belonging that makes you belong just by hearing it, it’s a song that’ll always take care of...

Shout for libraries. Shout for the young readers who use them.

A sematary,” I say. “A what?” Viola says, looking round at all the square stones marking out their graves. Must be a hundred, maybe two, in orderly rows and well-kept grass. Settler life is hard...

No one ever seems to wonder what happens if it turns out we hate living on a planet? What if the sky’s too big? What if the air stinks? What if we go hungry?’‘And what...

THERE IT IS,’ my mother says, and what she means is that the dot we’ve been nearing for weeks, the one that’s been growing into a larger dot with two smaller dots circling it, has...

And yeah, I know most people would think it weird that two guy friends touch as much as we do, but when you choose your family, you get to choose how it is between you,...

Yes”, Kumiko said, seriously. “Exactly that. The extraordinary happens all the time. So much, we can’t take it. Life and happiness and heartache and love. If we couldn’t put it in story – “”And explain...

We have to lie to ourselves to live. Otherwise, we’d go crazy.

Yeah, my parents are crappy, but you hurt either of my sisters and I will spend my life finding ways to destroy you.

Libraries are not facing crisis, they are in crisis.

Hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it’s dangerous, that it’s painful and risky, that it’s making a dare in the world and...

Her accent’s funny, different from mine, different from anyone in Prentisstown’s. Her lips make different kinds of outlines for the letters, like they’re swooping down on them from above, pushing them into shape, telling them...

Life equals running and when we stop running maybe that’s how we’ll know life is finally finished.

War is like a monster,” he says, almost to himself. “War is the devil. It starts and it consumes and it grows and grows and grows.” He’s looking at me now. “And otherwise normal men...

Did it matter? George thought perhaps it did, and not in terms of finding truth or of any hope of discovering what really happened at any given moment. There were as many truths – overlapping,...

Real life is only ever just real life. Messy. What it means depends on how you look at it. The only thing you’ve got to do is find a way to live there.

And what exactly do you think this proves?” he spits. “You’ve got power, but you don’t know what to do with it.” VIOLA”Looks like I’m doing fine,” I say.

There’s so much proscription in the lives of young people, and it’s so vital to have a place that says, look, here are the doors onto the world and amazingly, you’re free to choose any...

HELP!” I cry.But there’s no one.Haven’s completely empty.There ain’t hope here after all.

But what is a dream, Conor O’Malley? the monster said, bending down so it’s face was close to Conor’s. Who is to say that it is not everything else that is the dream?