“Trust this: drinking until you go away from the world only wastes moments of your life. All that time is lost. And time and love are incredibly precious. Yes? Don't waste either.”

“No. Look, the mutual tug paid extra.” Dante mimed jerking and squirting without looking embarrassed, which only made Griff more embarrassed. “And thestuff you did at the end bumped our fee even—”“I know, man. Sorry about—”“—more. Bullshit, sorry! Blowing your jazz on me got us a three hundred dollar bonus. Didja know that?” Dante rolled his eyes and waved away the worry.“Dude, if I could get a fee every time you squirted on me, I’d camp under your bed and have you doing it three times a day.”Help me, Jesus.Griff’s eyes honest-to-God bugged at that.”

“Love hurts.Think back over romance novels you’ve loved or the genre-defining books that drive our industry. The most unforgettable stories and characters spring from crushing opposition. What we remember about romance novels is the darkness that drives them. Three hundred pages of folks being happy together makes for a hefty sleeping pill, but three hundred pages of a couple finding a way to be happy in the face of impossible odds makes our hearts soar. In darkness, we are all alone.So don’t just make love, make anguish for your characters. As you structure a story, don’t satisfy your hero’s desires, thwart them. Make sure your solutions create new problems. Nurture your characters doubts and despair. Make them earn the happy ending they want, even better…make them deserve it. Delay and disappointment charge situations and validate character growth. Misery accompanies love. It’s no accident that many of the stories we think of as timeless romances in Western Literature are fiercely tragic: Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Cupid and Psyche… the pain in them drags us back again and again, hoping that this time we’ll find a way out of the dark.Only if you let your characters get lost will we get lost in them. And that, more than anything else, is what romance can and should do for its protagonists and its readers: lead us through the labyrinth, skirt the monstrous despair roaming its halls, and find our way into daylight.”

“Just then Dante leaned against him, brow between his shoulder blades for a moment, so tentatively Griff held his breath. His voice was almost sheepish. “Nah. Everyone knows I was born defective. They didn’t instal you until later.”

“The smile on her face was almost Dante's. Tears pricked his eyes, then hers, while all those impossible things passed between them. While the truth was sending down roots and throwing out branches until it filled the silent room with impossible blossoms.I love him.”

“Your life needs an airbag. I swear, Anastagio, you should have come equipped when you were born.”

“For the first time in his life he understood why the Bible called sex "knowing". Everything was different. Now he knew Dante. He'd known Dante. And wonder of wonders, Dante had known him right back.”