“Hierarchy was like breathing: the only time you thought about it was when something went wrong.”

“Had I truly thought I would not die when he kissed me? But I did. For a moment the breath and life went out of me and there was no time and no tomorrow but only my lips against his.”

“I thought about mistakes I had made in the past. I thought about when things went wrong. And I realized it was never an issue of intent, but of intensity. I was a good guy, recall.”

“We went down into the silent garden. Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.”

“I treated despair in terms of hierarchy: if there was a more important pain in the world, it meant my own was negated. I thought I simply had to accept the fact that I was ugly, and that to feel despair about it was simply wrong.”

“I suppose there's no good answer to that, Danny. I wish there was. But if you take the wrong, path, something deep inside you will feel twisted. There are times when that will be the only way to know the right from the wrong.”