“I need love. Here’s a list of other things I need: eggs, butter, flour, and sugar. I’m making a cake for the woman I love—and another one for my lover.”

“Out of love I made you a cake. Also out of milk, eggs, flour, sugar, and vanilla.”

“How come when you mix water and flour together you get glue...and then you add eggs and sugar and you get cake? Where does the glue go?”

“when I get to the end of what I’m saying, I have to believe in my having said it, that’s often all that’s needed just as water, flour, and yeast make bread.”

“Is it possible really to love other people? If I’m lonely and in pain, everyone outside me is potential relief—I need them. But can you really love what you need so badly? Isn’t a big part of love caring more about what the other person needs? How am I supposed to subordinate my own overwhelming need to somebody else’s needs that I can’t even feel directly? And yet if I can’t do this, I’m damned to loneliness, which I definitely don’t want … so I’m back at trying to overcome my selfishness for self-interested reasons.”

“I once told you to leave and not to love me,” he cried out, muffled. “I’m taking all of that back. Not because I deserve it or because I’m worthy of your love. But because I need it like the air I breathe. I need you. I need you to believe in me. I need your love to make me feel like I can be redeemed.”