“You don't have fangs." "I do." Why did it feel as if she'd just insulted his virility? "I don't think I would have missed something like that, Styx." Wry sarcasm dripped from each word. "Show me.”

“You are nothing like the others. You aren't like anyone I've ever met. I swear it. Now that I've had a taste of you, no one else will ever be enough for me. I need you...only you. Alex, you have my heart.”

“I'm Perfect at Feelings,
so I have no problem telling you
why you cried over the third lost
metal or the mousetrap. I knew
that orgasms weren't your fault
and that feeling of keeping solid
in yourself but wanting an ecstatic
black hole was just bad beauty.

Certain loves were perfect
in the daytime and had every
right to express carnally behind
the copy machine and there are
no hard feelings for the boozy
sodomy and sorry XX daisy chain,
whenever it felt right for you.

And when the moment of soft
levitation with erasing hands
made you feel dirty, like
the main person to think up love
in the first place, I knew that.
It's okay, you're an innocent
with the brilliance of an animalstuffing yourself sick on a kill.
Don't, don't feel like the runt alien
on my ship: I get you. I know
the dimensions of your wishing
and losing and don't think you
a glutton with petty beefs. But
even I, who know your triggers,

your emblematic sacs of sad fury,
I understand why the farthest fat trees
sliver down with your disappointment
and why the big sense of the world,
wrong before you, shrugs but
somewhere grasps your spinning,
stunning, alone. But you have me.”

“(about William Blake)As for Blake's happiness--a man who knew him said: "If asked whether I ever knew among the intellectual, a happy man, Blake would be the only one who would immediately occur to me."And yet this creative power in Blake did not come from ambition. ...He burned most of his own work. Because he said, "I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much detracted from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit. I wish to live for art. I want nothing whatever. I am quite happy."...He did not mind death in the least. He said that to him it was just like going into another room. On the day of his death he composed songs to his Maker and sang them for his wife to hear. Just before he died his countenance became fair, his eyes brightened and he burst into singing of the things he saw in heaven. ”

“Why did he have to be sensible? This maddened me. It was my body. I should be able to decide when and if I needed medical attention. I let out a determined huff. They could try to make me go, but I wouldn't be forced.”

“How could I have ever loved Peg? I love you." And too late, he realized that the words he had just spoken were the truth. He closed his eyes, holding her even more tightly, allowing himself to finally realize and identify his feelings. He was stunned by their enormity, their intensity, their power.~Sean O'Neill”

“Now before going to a party, I just tell myself to listen with affection to anyone who talks to me, to be in their shoes when they talk, to try to know them without my mind pressing against theirs, or arguing, or changing the subject. No. My attitude is: 'Tell me more.' This person is showing me his soul. It is a little dry and meager and full of grinding talk just now, but presently he will begin to think, not just automatically to talk. He will show his true self. Then he will be wonderfully alive.' ...Creative listeners are those who want you to be recklessly yourself, even at your very worst, even vituperative, bad-tempered. They are laughing and just delighted with any manifestation of yourself, bad or good. For true listeners know that if you are bad-tempered it does not mean that you are always so. They don't love you just when you are nice; they love all of you.”