And changing for the better doesn't mean that he's ever going to reach good.

And I look at her sitting there and she looks across the river and we wait as the dawn fully arrives, each of us knowing. Each of us knowing the other.

We sure as ruddy heck ain't in Prentisstown no more," I say to Manchee under my breath.

You be as angry as you need to be,” she said. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Not your grandma, not your dad, no one. And if you need to break things, then by God, you break them good and hard.

Midnight passes and I'm twenty-five days and a million years from becoming a man.

You do not write your life with words...You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.

And if one day,' she said, really crying now, 'you look back and you feel bad for being so angry, if you feel bad for being so angry at me that you couldn't even speak to me, then you have to know, Conor, you have to that is was okay. It was okay. That I knew. I know, okay? I know everything you need to tell me without you having to say it out loud.