What he was scared of was not that maybe she was a creature who survived by drinking other people's blood. No, it was that she might push him away.

When there's nothing to see, when there are no thoughts, life comes instead.

You can plan for things, work towards them for years, and yet they never materialize. Or you can just happen to be in the right place at the right moment, and everything falls into place. If you want to believe in something like Fate, she's a capricious character. Sometimes she stand there blocking the doorway you were born to pass through, and sometimes she takes you by the hand and leads you through the minute you poke your nose out. And the stars gaze down and keep their counsel.

He had put his hand up in class, a declaration of existence, a claim that he knew something. And that was forbidden to him. They could give a number of reasons for why they had to torment him; he was too fat, too ugly, too disgusting. But the real problem was simply that he existed, and every reminder of his existence was a crime.

Who can really say how decisions are made, how emotions change, how ideas arise? We talk about inspiration; about a bolt of lightnng from a clear sky, but perhaps everything is just as simple and just as infinitely complex as the processes that make a particular leaf fall at a particularmoment. That point has been reached, that's all. It has to happen, and it does happen.

It was as if she lived only on clear, salty air, and when the day came for her to pass away, she would probably do exactly that. Just take a step to one side. Dissolve into a north-westerly wind as it whirled around the lighthouse at North Point, then out across the sea.

They stood there for a while, not saying anything. Then Eli said: 'Do you want to come in?' Oskar didn't reply. Eli pulled on her T-shirt, lifted her hands, let them fall. 'I'm never going to hurt you.' 'I know that.' 'What are you thinking about?' 'That T-shirt. Is it from the trash room?' '...yes.' 'Have you washed it?' Eli didn't answer. 'You're a little gross, you know that?' 'I can change, if you like.' 'Good. Do that.