“That is the problem with being twelve. All the grown-ups think they have a right to know your business.”

“I have found that there are two ways of dealing with men. Either you treat them with respect, or you kill them. Anything in between merely breeds resentment and the desire for revenge.”

“Memories are important, like the bones of the mind. We build ourselves upon them, flesh and blood moulded around the pictures of what is past.”

“I have seen worse things than ghosts, and if one were to appear to me, I should have so many questions to ask of it that it would have no time to groan and moan and shake its chains.”

“I am almost dizzied by a sudden knowledge, as cold as snow down my spine; that I, too, will grow up one day like everyone else, and look back and miss the years gone by, and the things I could have done, should have done. And growing up is suddenly not something to be impatient for, not all jam and buns and doing as one pleases. It is precisely the opposite.”

“That is the problem with being twelve. All the grown-ups think they have a right to know your business.”

“Places ain't home. People is. Bricks and chairs is nothing.”

“He is a Christian, and believes charity begins at home. And often it remains there.”

“It's all very well to say beauty is under the skin, or in the eye of the beholder, but no-one would say no to being prettier if they had the chance, so it is all rot.”