At the end of a criminal’s life, it’s always the small mistake, the coincidence, the lark. The time we got too comfortable, the time we slipped up, the time someone aimed a little to the left. I’ve heard Grandad’s war stories a thousand times. How they finally got Mo. How Mandy almost got away. How Charlie fell. Birth to grave, we know it’ll be us one day. Our tragedy is that we forget it might be someone else first.

If curiosity killed the cat, it was satisfaction that brought it back.

I’ve stripped my life down,” he told me. “I don’t need much. I have all the company I want to keep right in here.” He shot himself in the head with his fingers. “People don’t understand about the need to live simply. They make appointments all day. They even schedule their own deaths. The first time they’ll have freedom to really be themselves is when they no longer exist. But up here, there’s nothing but me and the sky. A million billion stars.

Sometimes,” Sam says, “I can’t tell when you’re lying.” “I never lie,” I lie.

No trouble ever got fixed late at night," he said. "Midnight is for regrets.

She'd always been a little contemptuous of beauty, as though it was something you had to trade away some other vital thing for.

I'm afraid my voice is going to break. I am afraid she is going to hear how much this hurts.