“But my love had no intentions: it knew the future. All one could do was try to make the future less hard, to break the future gently when it came.”

“The future came and went in the mildly discouraging way that futures do.”

“I knew then that my future had always been Ren.”

“The fact of that devotion is nothing less than sacrifice. The only good of which mortals are capable of love. To even begin to do good, one must be willing to go beyond oneself. All things made by man perish. All words scatter into the emptiness that is the future. Only love endures. Love for what is. Not for what was or could be. Love for what is—that alone is true love. That alone the future cannot dissolve. For that love is God.”

“...and I was afraid because I knew I had outgrown my past before I could see a path to my future.”

“Sveta had much less to say, but she sat with Lev and held his hand, and when I asked her what had made her fall in love with him, she replied, ‘I knew he was my future. When he was not there, I would look for him, and he would always appear by my side. That is love.’ Sveta”