How could it be that I wanted those scary narrow streets and books and coffee shops for her so much more than she wanted them for herself?
I had no contacts in, no make-up on, my hair was a frizzy state, my bum was on show for the whole world to see and, for the I also happened to be hanging upside-down from a tree.
No, she did not want to go to hospital. Yes, she would like a cup of tea. Only then did she begin to think rationally again.
Living a lie is painful, and doesn’t do anyone any good. I had to be true to myself, because, either way, God would know if I was lying.
The Girl was gone, buried in the past. She never wanted to hear that name again. She was a woman for better for worse. Whatever the future might bring she could face it as a woman, Ned Ridley's woman.
Children are knives, my mother once said. They don’t mean to, but they cut. And yet we cling to them, don’t we, we clasp them until the blood flows.
Sex is not about genitalia. It’s about relationship. When God said ‘the two shall become one flesh,’ he didn’t mean it only physically.
A woman made of parts is a dangerous thing. You never know when she'll throw away a piece you may need.
I think what a family is shouldn't be so hard to see. It should be the one thing people know just by looking at you.
I sit there on the floor with the picture in front of me and think about how things get broken all the time by accident, and how sometimes you just don't get round to getting them fixed.
Music has more rules than math or magic and it's twice as dangerous as both or either.
My mother has a gap between her two front teeth. So does Daddy Gunnar. Each child in this family has the same space connecting us.
Apparently when it's two people, it's quirky and funny, but when it's a person doing the same stuff on her own, it's rebellious and antisocial.
Nothing in the world is like this- a bright white page with pale blue lines. The smell of a newly sharpened pencil the soft hush of it moving finally one day into letters.
You know what they say - sleep is the mother's drug of choice, but like heroin, only the very rich and the very poor can afford it.
We live in a world where there is such a clear definition of what a girl should be that it takes almost no effort at all to completely hate ourselves.
It was some time since I had gone to sleep in the same room with a girl. Of course, the room was large and reasonably well-lighted, and the girl had other things than me on her mind.
How did we keep getting so lost in a midnight world? Why did we continue lamenting as we wounded our hearts and were cut apart?
I could kiss that girl. And ya know what? I will kiss that girl. As soon as I get back to school, I'm gonna grab her, and I'm gonna kiss her.
Ergo: girls should always make the first move, because (a) they are, on the whole, less likely to be rejected than guys, (b) that way, girls will never get kissed unless they want to be kissed.
Maybe that's why people have friends at all. Not because they like them so much but because they don't make them feel so much worse.
