“I felt his hot tears and the loneliness of man and the sweetness of all men and the aching haunting beauty of the living”

“I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others--young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.”

“A man is an island in the only sense that matters, not an easy way to be. We live in mystery, a cosmos of separate lonely bodies, men, insects, stars. It is all loneliness and men know it best.”

“It’s worth all the aches, All the tears, the mistakes… The heart of a man and a woman in love? It’s worth all of the pain in the world.”

“Jake's mouth found mine, his lips molding hot and soft to my own. His tongue tentatively tested the seal of my lips; I parted them and he pushed inside. It was startlingly sweet and achingly familiar, like finding harbor.”

“And the imagination is haunting, but so beautiful that I want to live in that instead.”