You're judging her by her literacy,' Tara says. 'You're a literacist.' 'You've made that up.' Thomas Mackee packs up his stuff and stands up. 'You chicks give me the shits,' he says. 'You, on the other hand, brighten up our day,' I tell him. 'We all regard you as a god.

I've been waiting for you all night and day,' she said. Froi shivered. He realised that the words came from Quintana the ice maiden. Realised, as he felt his face heating up, that the idea of this Quintana waiting for him with excitement spoke to parts of him he believed to be dormant. And then she winked. 'Did I do that right?' she asked. Her smile was lopsided and he saw a glimpse of the teeth. And Froi imagined that he would follow her to the ends of the earth.

He came third in the state for woodwork,” Francesca explains. “We actually had to be proud of him for a whole week. Tough times.

I’m frightened that one morning there will not be enough to keep me going.

My body becomes a raft and there's this part of me that wants just literally to go with the flow. To close my eyes and let it take me. But I know sooner or later I will have to get out, that I need to feel the earth beneath my feet, between my toes - the splinters, the bindi-eyes, the burning sensation of hot dirt, the sting of cuts, the twigs, the bites, the heat, the discomfort, the everything. I need desperately to feel it all, so when something wonderful happens, the contrast will be so massive that I will bottle the impact and keep it for the rest of my life.

you grab at any sign of hope. You grab it with both hands and breathe life into it, day after day. You do anything to keep it alive.

She could have dropped you both off. whar's the worst she can do? cry hysterically?"the gears on the ute get stuck at the lights and will pushes tom's hand out of the way and and shoves it into the correct gear."it wasn't her" he mutters after a moment."sorry?" tom says."she didn't cry""then what?"it's too quiet except for the quiet for the crap engine sounding like a lawn mower."i cried"luca bursts out laughing beside will."yeah, well i did" will says. "And it's not the thing you want to do in front of a bunch on engineers.