“Love was something I would not have to worry about - the whole mystery of love, heartbreak songs, and family legends. Women who pined, men who went mad, people who forgot who they were and shamed themselves with need, wanting only to be loved by the one they loved. Love was a mystery. Love was a calamity. Love was a curse that had somehow skipped me, which was no doubt why I was so good at multiple-choice tests and memorizing poetry. Sex was a country I been dragged into as an unwilling girl - sex, and the madness of the body. For all that it could terrify and confuse me, sex was something I had assimilated. Sex was a game or a weapon or an addiction. Sex was familiar. But love - love was another country.”

“As for sex. Well, of course I could’ve had sex. Guys will have sex with a watermelon if they’re desperate enough. Lots of girls try to prove their love by having sex. It only proves they’re having sex.”

“I don't think I'm the type who falls in love. She was a friend. And we had good sex.”

“He would not deceive himself so much. He would not – and this was the test – pretend to care about women when the only sex that attracted him was his own. He loved men and always had loved them. He longed to embrace them and mingle his being with theirs. Now that the man who returned his love had been lost, he admitted this.”

“Sex is sex. Love is love. The first is a raw biological process, the latter is something more.”

“I wasn't totally immune to the charms of the opposite sex, but I wasn't one of those romantic, swoony girls who had pink fluffy daydreams about falling in love.”