“You’d kiss me back right now if I kissed you,” he said, and I tried to decide whether to even attempt denial. “But then you’d remember him and you’d feel bad for it.”

“If you could smell my smile, you’d nose how bad I want to kiss you. But you can’t, and I don’t.”

“It was a blessing and also a curse of handwritten letters that unlike email you couldn’t obsessively reread what you’d written after you’d sent it. You couldn’t attempt to un-send it. Once you’d sent it it was gone. It was an object that no longer belonged to you but belonged to your recipient to do with what he would. You tended to remember the feeling of what you’d said more than the words. You gave to object away and left yourself with the memory. That was what it was to give.”

“I lay on that mattress and I knew you’d find me. I ran through those woods, Tate, and I knew you’d be looking for me. I was shouting because I knew you’d hear me. And I ran right into you because you were coming for me.”

“Sir, no insult intended, but you said to me once that you don’t like kiss-asses and that you’d rather work with people challenging your perceptions.”

“If you understood everything I said, you’d be me”