Quotes from Malorie Blackman

Tout le monde se fiche des "presque", Dante. Si les " presque" comptaient, toute la population adulte, hormis peut-être une ou deux bonnes sœurs, serait en prison.

it any wonder I preferred the laughter of his house to the dignified silence of my own?

when you're floating up and up in your bubble, that bubbles have a habit of bursting. The higher you climb, the further you have to fall.

Boys don't cry but real men do.

Don't you think I'm beautiful, Callum?' Lynette whispered. 'yes' I replied truthfully 'very.

She looked up to stare at her reflection in the mirror, as if she'd never seen her face before either.

with disgust. 'You know what mothers are like,' Nosh shrugged. 'Yeah, but your mum doesn't go round showing you up,' I pointed out.

You wanna know the difference between a mosquito and a lawyer? One is a blood-sucking parasite and the other is an insect.

Life is not a dress rehearsal'. There were no rewrites, no retakes,

Politics gets nastier and more vicious with each passing year. It's not a parade of ideals or ethics any more. It's about celebrity, false promises and image.

Whoever came up with the saying 'sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me' was talking out of his or her armpit.

He'll soon be as stuck-up as them.' Jude prodded me in the same place where he'd just punched me,

To tell the truth, I was looking forward to school tomorrow. I was actually going to secondary school. I could make something of myself, do something with my life. Once I had a proper education behind me, no one could turn around and say, 'You're not smart enough or good enough.' No one. I was on my way UP! And with a proper education behind me, nothing could stand between Sephy and me. Nothing. three.

Disappointment raced through me. But then, what did I expect? 'Sephy, I could never be bored of you, with you, around you. You're exciting, scintillating, overwhelming company!' Yeah, right! Dream on, Sephy!!

Being in and being accepted are two different things.

You're all at least a year behind and …' 'And whose fault is that?' Callum said with erupting bitterness. 'Until a few years ago we were only allowed to be educated up to the age of fourteen – and in noughts-only schools at that, which don't have a quarter of the money or resources that your schools have.

There's more to life than just us noughts and you Crosses.

Us noughts and you Crosses.' I shook my head. 'It makes it sound like … like you're in one place and I'm in another, with a huge, great wall between us.

Maybe we are in different places …' 'No, we aren't. Not if we don't want to be, we aren't.' I willed Callum to look at me. 'I wish it was that simple.' 'It is.

He suddenly seemed so much older, not just in years but in the things he knew and had experienced.

Why had I thought of it that way? As a friendship both of us needed? That didn't make any sense at all.

Sometimes, when love has flown or is absent, when life knocks us to the ground and won't let us get back up, hope may be all we have left to cling to.

myself. I'd felt ashamed of myself a lot recently, and, if I'm honest, part of me resented Callum for it. I didn't want to feel guilty for just being, but that's how he was beginning to make me feel.

Suddenly all I had were questions.