“When I was this kid's age, you'd be burned alive for such talk. Being a homosexual was unthinkable, and so you denied it, and found a girlfriend who was willing to settle for the sensitive type. On dates, you'd remind her that sex before marriage was just that, sex: what dogs did in the front yard. This as opposed to making love, which was more what you were about. A true union of souls could take anywhere from eight to ten years to properly establish, but you were willing to wait, and for this the mothers loved you. You sometimes discussed it with them over an iced tea, preferably on the back porch when you girlfriend's brother was mowing the lawn with his shirt off.”

“This isn't what I expected when I found out you were sleeping in the house.""What did you expect?""I expected you'd come over here because you couldn't wait an extra minute to have fabulous, mind-blowing sex with me.”

“When I came back from lunch and found out you'd been reassigned to Nick, I went up to be certain that you were doing all right. Mary told me that you'd just gone into Nick's office, so I opened the door and looked in to see if you needed rescuing. There you were-smiling angelically at him while you gave him messages from other women and turned down his offer of an 'affair.'"Resting his head against the back of his chair, Jim closed his eyes and laughed. "Oh Lauren, you were magnificent! I was just about to leave when you pushed him too far and told him you'd call him when your daughter was of age, so that he could, er, initiate her,as I gather he initiated you?”

“Being a successful couple was learning what you were willing to compromise on, and what you weren't; learning when to stand your ground, and when to give it up; what was truly important enough to fight over, and what was just you being pissy. You learned each other's hot buttons, the places that hurt, or angered, when you pressed them. Love makes you learn where all the pitfalls are, and how to avoid them, or how to set them off.”

“He stared right back at Blaylock and let everything he had in his heart show in his face.He just let that shit fly.Because there was a lesson in this Fade ceremony tonight: You could lose the ones you loved in the blink of an eye - and he was willing to bet, when it happened, you weren't thinking about all the reasons that could have kept you apart. You thought of all the reasons that kept you together.And, no doubt, how you wished you'd had more time. Even if you'd had centuries...When you were young, you thought time was a burden, something to be discharged as fast as possible so you could be grown-up. But it was such a bait-and-switch - when you were an adult, you came to realize that minutes and hours were the single most precious thing you had.No one got forever. And it was a fucking crime to waste what you were given.-Qhuinn”

“You were at the age where you could fall in love with a girl over an expression, over a gesture. That's what happened with your girlfriend, Paloma- she stooped to pick up her purse and your heart flew out of you.”