“Everyone you love is slowly dying and if you choose not to love them right they will die without knowing.”

All he knew was chaos and this mortal world was obsessed with order

Seek no homes in other people’s chests.

The greatest wish I have ever had is to create with words, what wizards cannot and what magic never has.

The woman who tames fires and snakes and savours bones.

Every time a man takes from a woman’s body without her permission, he is disrespecting the womb from which he was born, he is defiling the place that protected him when he was at his most defenseless.

She takes her life and starts turning it into something beautiful without him. She learns how to love herself in the most intricate of ways. She goes out and spends time with her friends when she is lonely. She learns to love her alone.

The deepest love you can ever have is the love you have for yourself.

In a cave where everything is fragranced with water, she asks for a daughter instead of praying for a son.

The bad new is, what was shattered may never be possible to rebuild. The good new is, what you make in its place will be better than what was destroyed.

A wound left unhealed is bound to open again. That’s just what being human is.

Some people survive and talk about it. Some people survive and go silent. Some people survive and create. Everyone deals with unimaginable pain in their own way, and everyone is entitled to that, without judgment.

All because you were born into a family that could afford these things for you. This is called a privilege and you must never forget it.

Every love does not have to be made of desire. Some loves are kept for the people who stand by you through everything. Some soulmates are sisters not lovers. Some loves are for those who give you hope. And some for the strength, for wisdom, for dreams.

I wish they could see the tenderness in the way the darkness takes the night’s hand.

No one told me love could be a God of both living and dying. That girls who love girls do not just drown, they also float.

We remember that family is not just those of blood. But also those we choose to love.

We all know the stories about the Human Rights Act. About the illegal immigrant who cannot be deported because, and I am not making this up, he had a pet cat.

I lived in countries that had no democracy. so I don’t find myself in the same luxury as you do. You grew up in freedom, and you can spit on freedom because you don’t know what it is not to have freedom.

I know there are some voices calling for a punitive deal that punishes Britain. That would be an act of calamitous self-harm for the countries of Europe, and it would not be the act of a friend.

There is a knowing in her, she hears them say, that makes her untamable. She has known since she was a child that she is observant in a way that makes them uncomfortable.

I know how to handle noise better than I can handle silence.

All he knew was chaos and this mortal world was obsessed with order

A war is still a war even if it is inside your head, did you know this?

In one book, CACHALOT, just for my own amusement, every character is based directly on someone I have known.