6 Quotes by Catriona Ross

In the absence of her customised soundtrack, there's only the dissonant music of the tangible: her own breathing as she walks, the coughs and tics of her family, their tacky-sounding footsteps on the road surface, the rustle of garments, the trundle of the stroller pushed by Tym while Boyki naps.

Apparently the sky was once dark. His grandparents spoke of it. 'Remember the time we walked home to the hotel that winter's night? You couldn't see your hand in front of you.' The darkness was only in the country areas, so they'd had to travel out to see it. What had it felt like? Had there been stars? He had never thought to ask them.

The sound swells until Freya knows she is approaching her personal maximum capacity. What now? She arrives at this point only to find it is a tissue barrier to be pushed through. Beyond it, she increases not in sound volume but in some other dimension. Something is growing, becoming greater than she is.

Mastery of the self is everything.

The sexiest part of a woman,’ Carlos said after considering her question for a few moments, ’is her mind. Her thoughts. What is inside.

Although he was a young man, younger by far than any of the others, Clare could tell from the gate’s whine as it swung out before him that he knew from experience how certain things worked – people, women, complicated gates. He knew how to touch something so that it clicked open in his hands.