“Every minute you spend with someone gives them a part of your life and takes part of theirs.”

“Here," I say. "You can put music behind it, and it will be your own." And it strikes me that this is how writing anything is, really. A collaboration between you who give the words and they who take them and find meaning in them, or put music behind them, or turn them aside because they were not what was needed.”

“Everyone has something of beauty about them. But loving lets you look, and look, and look again. You notice the back of a hand, the turn of a head, the way of a walk. When you first love, you look blind and you see it all as the glorious, beloved whole, or a beautiful sum of beautiful parts. But when you see the one you love as pieces, as why's, you can love those parts too, and it's a love at once more complicated and more complete.”

“Perhaps it is because now I live in his story. Now I am a part of his, and he of mine, and the part we write sometimes feels like the only part that matters.”

“Ever since the day of the mistake with my Match. I've never known which life is my true one. Even with the reassurances of the Offical that day in the greenspace, I think a part of me hasn't felt at peace. It was as though I saw for the first time that life could branch into different paths, take different directions.”

“And it strikes me that this is how writing anything is, really. A collaboration between you who give the words and they who take them and find meaning in them, or put music behind them, or turn them aside because they were not what was needed.”

“There is satisfaction in knowing that something good and right and true was part of you. That you had the blessing, gift, good fortune, perfect luck, to know someone like this, to pass through fire and water and stone and sky together and emerge, all of you, strong enough to hold on, strong enough to let go. (Cassia)”