“This had always been the worst time when the quiet emptiness could leave him gasping for breath. She was there, his wife, a peripheral shadow moving across a doorway, or in the reflection of a window, and he had to stop looking for her. And the whiskey helped – helped him walk past her when the fire was doused. But occasionally she followed him up the stairs and that’s why he began to take the bottle with him, because she stood in the corner of their bedroom and watched him undress, and when he was on the verge of sleep, she leant over him and asked him things like, Remember when we first met?”

“I pulled the blanket around my shoulders. The sky was dark and vast and empty and not even a plane disturbed that sullen stillness, not even a star. The emptiness above was now mine within. It was a part of me, like a freckle, like a bruise. Like a middle name now one acknowledged.”

“... shunning all offers of help, all offers of the more practical... This was his task, he said, and it would be carried out alone. Penance, my brother reminded me, was a lonely place to be.”

“... I wrote about ... my childhood, when dreams were small and attainable for all. When sweets were a penny and god was a rabbit.”

“If we can accept the laws of the universe, the ebb and flow of joy and tragedy, then we have everything we need to embrace our true freedom.”

“Their banter was rich and comfortable, their teasing intimate and profound; their 'I love you' without the use of those startling words.”

“Emotions embarassed her except when she sang. My dad said that was exactly why she sang.”

“Shut up, Arthur,' said my mother, and he zipped his mouth shut like an infuriating child.Ginger started to laugh. Not at anything in particular, but just because Ginger was stoned.”

“I'd been feeling like this for a while, the continual looking back, the stuckness of it all. I blamed it on the coming New Year, only four and a half months away, when the clocks would read zero and we would start again, could start again, but I knew we wouldn't. Nothing would. The world would be the same, just a little bit worse.”

“Nothing stays forgotten for long, Elly. Sometimes we simply have to remind the world that we're still here.”

“Nothing stays forgotten for long, Elly. Sometimes we simply have to remind the world that we're special and that we're still here.”