"You live by whatever rules you need to govern your life the best you think. Let's just try not to encroach."

"Young lovers. If you get it right, it's amazing what you can share. The challenging part is maintaining it."

"Self-harm appealed to my sadness but I didn't let it coax me."

"He was the captain of the rugby team and he was built like a fucking gorilla. He had the personality of a fucking gorilla, too."

"After spending the previous night the way I had, I felt I could afford to lose some of the daytime to sleep."

"I'd been exposed to alternate ways of thinking and it seriously affected the way my mother had reared me."

"She didn't want to alienate herself from the very wealthy man that was about to offer her a job by declining the polite offer of a drink."

"Misadventure was my primary compass and I followed it without caring if I pissed off one person or a whole bunch of people."

"Emily wondered whether Artie would be so carefree if he knew The Book Club was performing grand theft imagination."

"Anxiety's already tingling my skin."

"I took her word and didn't let my concern for my future ruin the present moment."

"Ms Rainn, you might say, is a writing prodigy and I'm her mentor."

"Appreciate the negatives. Because the negatives are what you learn from to make more positives."

"I didn't let what I wanted to do become a made up memory that I looked back on years down the road and wished it was real."

"My old ways were much more appealing than my new ways."

"My newfound motivation had me feeling confident in my ability and I headed to Mackay with a plan."

"My job had been to get the package from point A to point B and what happened after that did not need to concern me. I was just the mule."

"I think that Richard was more of a one-girl-for-the-rest-of-your-life-marry-and-make-a-family kind of guy."

"We each have a little imagination in all of us, and a book is the best absorbent there is."

"If I hadn't worked up the courage to talk to Christy, she most likely would have been a pretty face that disappeared back into the crowd."

"She'd been fed anti-consumerist bullshit by her parents but didn't understand simple economics."

"By the first mouthful I knew that I was going to get drunk that night. The drink tasted too good not to."

"Time is wasted on the young and experience is wasted on the old."

"Other times, when existential crisis mode kicked in, I flirted with the idea of giving up and drifting whichever way gravity and wind moved me."

"It'll be the biggest decision of my life. Knowing me, I'll probably make the wrong choice."

"Misadventure will always cause someone to be pissed off at you, because they don't know what degree you're willing to go to to satisfy your need for misadventure."

"Isn't the smell of coffee the best alarm clock?"

"I'd gotten on the piss and it had kicked me the fuck off. Hard."

"He could tell her that dogs used to look like cats and vice versa without a lick of proof and it would change the way she regarded the animals."

"Looking back really does make you wonder, but the truth is it doesn't change a thing."

"A donation to the police officer's back pocket should have you on your way without a problem."

"What does that quote mean to you? Can you explain the concept behind it and not just repeat the pretty phrase to me?"

"The spirit of pessimism inside of her was purely organic."

"Your imagination and some masturbation is a much better alternative to finding out what kind of person a bit of casual sex transforms you into."

"The stretch of Bruce Highway between Gin Gin and Miriam Vale was long and lonesome."

"Thoughts. Your imagination. The voices inside your head. They're all the same thing and spirit is what fuels it."

"One thing a girl loves more than a bad boy is a self-aware bad boy."

"My anger tempted the act of delinquency and it felt good to dabble."

"Your choices can only be limited by your mind."

"Besides the pain in my gut, why shouldn't I laugh? I've almost escaped death in a foreign country."

"If you're not happy with yourself, how can you even begin to figure out if another person makes you happy, annoyed, angry, sad and so on."

"I think the last thing you should do to someone willing to put your penis in their mouth is give them criticism."

"You must learn not to rely so heavily on others. Only then will help come when you truly need it."

"You've got to try and not let it keep you down. Sure, let it hurt but don't let it harm you."

"They were queen bitches and it seemed everyone and everything they knew and everyone and everything they didn't know deserved some kind of criticism."

"So much to do but so many incompetent workers," I said, playing to his take-no-shit-get-in-and-fucking-do-it attitude."

"I found it hard to get motivated because I found it hard to care."

"When you're in the safety of the future, the past doesn't seem so relevant."

"WARNING: The production of spirit is a very delicate and dangerous procedure. It should be left to the professionals and under absolutely no circumstance be replicated."

"You know what's the worst? Having realistic, ordinary expectations taken out of your reach by seemingly unrealistic, extraordinary circumstances."