That’s where proper stories begin, don’t they, when the handsome stranger arrives and everything goes wrong?

Thoughts are strange creatures. They lead you from one thing to another. Sometimes you don’t know how you got from one to the next.

Imagine a world without shadows. You cannot touch a shadow, but a world without them is a hard world, and flat.

When Rose takes to screaming, she starts loud, continues loud, and ends loud. Rose has a very good ear and always screams on the same note. I'd tested her before I burnt the library, and our piano along with it. Rose screams on the note B flat. We don't need a piano anymore now that we have a human tuning fork.

Life and stories are alike in one way: They are full of hollows. The king and queen have no children: They have a child hollow. The girl has a wicked stepmother: She has a mother hollow. In a story, a baby comes along to fill the child hollow. But in life, the hollows continue empty.

The handkerchief dabbed at my forehead. 'Ouch! You'll have a fine-looking bruise tomorrow.' 'Then you'll be able to distinguish me from Rose.' The handkerchief paused. 'I could tell you apart from the beginning. You're quite different to each other, you know.' Perhaps he could tell, in the obvious ways. The odd one was Rose; the other odd one was Briony.

Yes, I'm shallow, I don't mind admitting it. Perhaps I should admit that there's no end to the depths of my shallowness.