“Strange territory for me: the after-snap. I still feel myself vibrating. Humming.”

“I’ll still be missing you as much as ever. I’l still smile at the memory of you. I’ll still be - Okay, I’ll say it again - loving you, but I won’t abandon myseld for you. I cannot be faithful to you without being faithful to myself.”

“He's so cute, I can't help myself.”

“You liked me."I smiled. "You were smitten with me. You were speechless to behold my beauty. You had never met anyone so fascinating. You thought of me every waking minute. You dreamed about me. You couldn't stand it. You couldn't let such wonderfulness out of your sight. You had to follow me."I turned to Cinnamon. He licked my nose. "Don't give yourself so much credit. It was your rat I was after."She laughed, and the desert sang.”

“I’m afraid she’ll look at him in someway that she doesn’t look at me. I’m afraid that when I go to bed at night I’ll still be wondering. I’m always afraid. Is that what love is—fear?”

“A baseball bat could not have hit me harder than that smile did. I was sixteen years old. In that time, how many thousands of smiles had been aimed at me? so why did this one feel like the first?”

“I thought of the stone angel. I pictured the snow falling over it, two classes of snow rising on the top of its wings. So silent, the both of them, the angel and the snow. I pretended I was the stone angel. I close my eyes and pretended as hard as I could, and after a while I was convinced I could feel wings sprouting from my shoulders. I wanted to look, to see my wings, but I was an angel stone, so I could not move.”