“you said Isthere anything whichis dead or alive more beautifulthan my body,to have in your fingers(trembling ever so little)?Looking intoyour eyes Nothing,i said,except theair of spring smelling of never and forever.....and through the lattice which moved asif a hand is touched by ahand(whichmoved as thoughfingers touch a girl'sbreast,lightly)Do you believe in always,the windsaid to the rainI am too busy withmy flowers to believe,the rain answered”

“What I can't do," Aadon said after a minute, as he traced his fingers down those pale, marked arms, "is ever let you go." He lifted Jesse's chin and looked into his soul-stealing brown eyes. "I am too far into you to ever get out. I'll have to move in with you, because I already need to breathe you like air."Jesse touched just the tips of his fingers to Aadon's cheek, awed by the continued acceptance. "I cannot believe I ever thought you were too tongue-tied to be a lawyer.”

“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyondany experience, your eyes have their silence:in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,or which i cannot touch because they are too nearyour slightest look easily will unclose methough i have closed myself as fingers,you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first roseor if your wish be to close me, i andmy life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,as when the heart of this flower imaginesthe snow carefully everywhere descending;nothing which we are to perceive in this world equalsthe power of your intense fragility: whose texturecompels me with the colour of its countries,rendering death and forever with each breathing(i do not know what it is about you that closesand opens; only something in me understandsthe voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands”

“MUSIC I heard with you was more than music, And bread I broke with you was more than bread. Now that I am without you, all is desolate, All that was once so beautiful is dead. Your hands once touched this table and this silver,And I have seen your fingers hold this glass. These things do not remember you, beloved: And yet your touch upon them will not pass. For it was in my heart you moved among them,And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes.And in my heart they will remember always: They knew you once, O beautiful and wise!”

“The pressure of his touch through my jacket and my sweater was more assurance than any promise ever made to me. It was a touch that said, I have your back and I am here for you. If a girl wasn't careful, she could fall in love with a touch like that.”

“Rodwell wandered into No Man's Land and put a bullet through his ears. On Sunday, Robert sat on his bed in the old hotel at Bailleul and read what Rodwell had written. To my daughter, Laurine;Love your mother. Make your prayers against despair. I am alive in everything I touch. Touch these pages and you have me in your fingertips. We survive in one another. Everything lives forever. Believe it. Nothing dies. I am your father always.”