Do you think there's such a thing as a ghost who masquerades as a person? Do you believe that there are people whose bodies are still alive here on earth but whose souls are already in hell?

Afterwards, in bed with a book, the spell of television feels remote compared to the journey into the page. To be in a book. To slip into the crease where two pages meet, to live in the place where your eyes alight upon the words to ignite a world of smoke and peril, colour and serene delight. That is a journey no one can end with the change of a channel. Enduring magic.

Materia had been just six when they docked in Sydney Harbour and her father said, 'Look. This is the New World. Anything is possible here.' She's been too young to realize that he was talking to her brother.

Lies like that are not a sin, they are a sacrifice.

Hope is a gift. You can't choose to have it. To believe and yet to have no hope is to thirst beside a fountain.

Memory plays tricks. Memory is another word for story, and nothing is more unreliable.

Tell the story, gather the events, repeat them. Pattern is a matter of upkeep. Otherwise the weave relaxes back to threads picked up by birds to make their nests. Repeat, or the story will fall and all the king's horses and all the king's men. . . . Repeat, and cradle the pieces carefully, or events will scatter like marbles on a wooden floor.