“I have a sort of . . . thing, I suppose, for certain words. They spark inside me, somehow, turning me to touchpaper, but I don't know what they are until someone says them.”

“I knew how to be a friend, a lover, a partner. I knew how to make someone feel cherished and seen and listened to -- everything I had myself always so desperately wanted and been afraid I might nev...”

“I thought of Marius. Wild, wonderful, Byronic-fantasy Marius, who had somehow found something he wanted in the everyday quietness of me. Until he hadn't.”

“I never interrupt people when they're speaking because I know only too well how annoying it is. But with my every brattish interjection, the dimples deepened at the corner of his lips. And I was ha...”

“Life is so full of rough edges - small tasks and expectations that scratch you bloody and remind you that you're naked and alone.”

“His attention. Sweet and intense at the same time. Like a barley sugar I could untwist from its plastic and hold in my mouth. A flood of secret pleasure.”

“There was no sudden, striking, and emotional transition. Like the warming of a room or the coming of daylight. When you first notice them they have already been going on for some time.”

“In daylight and up close, he was merciless, all smiles and freckles, the brightest, boldest flame a moth could wish for.”

“Anyone and anything can survive the daylight. It's night that's the hardest to live.”

“Love enters your heart a spark and exists your soul a flame.”

“Forbidden things - my God, I'm drawn to them like a moth to a flame.”

“The Holy One is a flame.”

“Those freckles make you seem like a galaxy of stars, just waiting to be explored and loved.”