Being amongst rough lives and confusion does not make you less, it only makes your beauty shine out more clearly.

On some deep, unconscious level, he had always known it to be true. He was an invention, a fictional character. Jacob Lightfoot didn't exist.

With the warmth of an alien sun on his back, Jacob took a deep breath at the door and knocked.

Sadie gave her head an exaggerated scratch. ‘Don’t come too close if you know what’s good for you, these nits are on steroids.

He saw the rules of life clearly for the first time and they were simple: it was a game where Death was the only winner.

Jake's in trouble.'Luca rolled his eyes. 'What now?''He's gone off somewhere, I think I know where, and I don't think it's good.''Cant that boy ever stay in and watch telly like the rest of us?

Jacob glanced across at the woman. 'She'd have you for breakfast, mate.''Yeah,' Luca countered, 'maybe I want to be had for breakfast.

It was a room full of ghosts, arranged in readiness for days that would never happen.

Elijah blinked in dazzling sunlight and took a deep breath. The sweet-pepper scent of meadow grass told him immediately where he was. Winded, he skidded to a halt as the portal spat him out. Above him stretched skies of cornflower blue, dotted with threadbare white clouds sailing over like cotton galleons on the summer breeze.

I don’t know why Kate was trying to impress him, as far as I could see the guy had all the allure and social grace of a psychotic slug with halitosis and a bad head cold.

Sometimes he was weird, sometimes he was Captain Douchebag, but he was always my best friend.

It doesn't seem right to throw dirt at you when you're dead...

I’m fading, Bethany, I know it. I think that’s what happened to my dad, that’s why I can’t see him. One day I’ll be so see-through that you’ll forget I was ever here, just like everyone else has.

That was when I realised a sad but incontrovertible truth: I was a geek, and there was no getting around it. I could dress in Kate’s clothes, but it didn’t make me Kate.