“It happend that Bob referred in front of Paul to the young woman met in Chantilly; it happened that Paul spoke to Bob of the one from the cinema that he'd had so much trouble seeing again. It never occurred to them that these portraits might bear a certain resemblance to each other, and the fact is that they bore none at all.”

“I cried, a bit, as a spoke to Belinda on my mobile phone, in a quiet corner, perhaps the only quiet corner in Jaipur. I told her how I'd hoped Paul would read the forward, that he'd read how much I admired his work and how much I admired him, how much I just plain liked him and loved him. But, even as I spoke, I knew: Paul had always known that. He'd seen in on my face every time we met. What made me cry was the obvious, stupid fact that we'd never meet again.”

“I agreed Paul knew his limits. But I never believed he'd choose to live within them.”

“Bob was not yet twenty, after all, while Jesse was thirty-four and in physical decline; each calendar week subtracted from Jesse the powers that Bob accrued.”

“Dear Hope, I NEVER thought Id see the day when two of your daily e-mails sandwiched a message from none other than PAUL PARLIPIANO. My crush to end all crushes! Gay man of my dreams! OOOH!”

“This is what he knew that Paul didn't: the world was precarious and sometimes cruel. He'd had to fight hard to achieve what Paul simply took for granted.”