If I learnt anything at all about terminal illness in my research, it's that the experience is different for everyone. I do believe that life becomes concentrated when it's boundaried and that death is the biggest boundary of all.

I wish I had a boyfriend. I wish he lived in the wardrobe on a coat hanger. Whenever I wanted, I could get him out and he'd look at me the way boys do in films, as if I'm beautiful.

She'd never in her whole life bunked school, smoked dope, or kissed a boy whose name she didn't know, and yet in the last few days, she'd done all these things.

when I was four I almost fell down the shaft of a tin mine and when I was five the car rolled over on the motorway and when I was seven we went on holiday and the gas ring blew out in the caravan and nobody noticed I've been dying all my life

Hold my hand. Don't let go.

If you want a girl to like you, you have to listen like a woman and love like a man.

Are you afraid, Tessa?