When you chopped logs with the ax and they split open they smelled beautiful, like Christmas. But when you split someone's head open it smelled like abattoir and quite overpowered the scent of the wild lilacs you'd cut and brought into the house only this morning, which was already another life.

What did you do when the worst thing that could happen to you had already happened - how did you live life then? You had to hand it to Theo Wyre, just carrying on living required a strength and courage that most people didn't have.

Men had no purpose on earth whereas women were gods walking unrecognized among them.

I spent four years doing a doctorate in postmodern American literature. I can recognize it when I see it.

If they would all sleep all the time she wouldn't mind being their mother.

Oh, God. What was happening to her, she was turning into a normal person.

It wasn't that [he] believed in religion, or a God, or an afterlife. He just knew it was impossible to feel this much love and for it to end.