Are you really going to work in that?" Maura asked. Blue looked at her clothing. It involved a few thin layering shirts, including one she had altered using a method called shredding. "What's wrong with it?" Maura shrugged. "Nothing. I always wanted an eccentric daughter. I just never realised how well my evil plans were working.

I slithered out of the sinkhole on my stomach. It was not the sexiest move I'd ever performed, but I was impressed nonetheless.

Joseph Beringer...dances around behind me singing some poorly rhymed and slightly dirty song about my [racing] odds at my skirts. 'I don't even wear skirts,' I snap at him. 'Especially,' he says, 'in my daydreams.

I was suddenly struck by how dissimilar we were. It occurred to me that if Grace and I were objects, she would be an elaborate digital clock, synced up with the World Clock in London with technical perfection, and I’d be a snow globe – shaken memories in a glass ball.

Every third step I ran, my breath exploded out of me all in a rush. One step to suck in another cold lungful. One step to let it excape. One step of not breathing.

And then I opened my eyes and it was just Grace and me - nothing anywhere but Grace and me - she pressing her lips together as though she were keeping my kiss inside her, and me, holding this moment that was as fragile as a bird in my hands.

Are you sure you want to go out with someone with that kind of history? ...He could have a psychotic break. I read that people get those when they're twenty-eight.