“I imagined my first night alone in bed with my stranger. I conjured our future years together unhampered by worries about money or officialdom. We would enjoy the day, the night, a smile, a word, a...”

“How can the moon be scooped from the water's surface, or flowers be plucked from the void?”

“I want a marriage of companionsone of shared lives and shared poems,' he murmured. 'If we were husband and wife, we would collect books, read, and drink tea together. As I told you before, I'd want...”

“In that moment I understood that the cruelest words in the universe are if only.”

“Perhaps he was afraid as I was that we'd be caught. Or perhaps he was breathing me in just as I was letting him come into my lungs, my eyes, my heart.”

“I want a marriage of companions—one of shared lives and shared poems,' he murmured. 'If we were husband and wife, we would collect books, read, and drink tea together. As I told you before, I'd wan...”

“They say when you are missing someone that they are probably feeling the same, but I don't think it's possible for you to miss me as much as I'm missing you right now”

“Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star. It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago.Maybe the star doesn't even exist any more. Yet sometimes that...”

“I want morning and noon and nightfall with you. I want your tears, your smiles, your kisses...the smell of your hair, the taste of your skin, the touch of your breath on my face. I want to see you ...”

“Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that youve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you sa...”

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there i...”