“I loved him as we always love for the first time; with idolatry and wild passion.”

“Love, genuine passionate love, was his for the first time.”

“He was my equal in beauty, a paragon of grace and charm, sparkling with wit, and burning with love. I adored him to distraction, to the point of idolatry: I loved him as one can never love twice.”

“How we love others is affected by how we love ourselves, and for the first time in a long time, I was whole.”

“I remember the first time we made love like it was the second time. We never made love again, and I don’t regret it for a second.”

“She looked at him and realized that she loved him, out of nowhere, pure and simple. She loved him: this boy who fit so naturally in the water, the wild, and in everything else. She loved him: this boy who seemed to grow up out of the ground itself. There was a part of her that had known this from the first time she had seen him. This was what love was: a landslide in your heart.”