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.

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.

Father’s silence is not merely the absence of sound. It’s a creature with a life of its own. It chokes you. It pinches you small as a grain of rice. It twists in your gut like a worm. Silence clawed at my throat. It left a taste of burnt matches.

A poem doesn’t come out and tell you what it has to say. It circles back on itself, eating its own tail and making you guess what it means.

I hated myself, but I also loved myself in a hateful way.

Let’s hope she’s like the others, who look only at the surface. Let’s hope she’d never think that a girl with black-velvet eyes and cut-glass cheekbones could be a witch.

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.