“He saw so many emotions mingled on her face: anger disappointment, fear – and defiance. Like her daughter, thought Fenoglio again. So uncompromising, so strong. Women were different, no doubt about it. Men broke so much more quickly. Grief didn’t break women. Instead it wore them down, it hollowed them out, very slowly.”

“Words,words filled the night like the fragrance of invisible flowers.”

“She felt as if the grave stones were whispering those names to her as she walked past... Those stones that bore no names seemed like closed mouths, sad mouths that forgotten how to speak. But perhaps the dead didn't mind what their names had once been?”

“I will try to write books until I drop dead.”

“Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?”

“If I was a book, I would like to be a library book, so I would be taken home by all different sorts of kids.”

“I'm perfectly happy to know the world at secondhand. It's a lot safer.”

“Children, they're the same everywhere. Greedy little creatures but the best listeners in the world -any world. The very best of all.”

“Courage was something John Reckless only ever wished he had. Courage was not a given; it was acquired, earned. You had to take the difficult paths, and John had always picked the easy ones.”

“Read – and be curious. And if somebody says to you: 'Things are this way. You can't change it' - don't believe a word.”

“Killing is easy," said Mo, "Dying is harder...”