“...I looked in the window, wanting to stay - it rained, yet I remained...because you were so lovely...”

“Part of my role is to look after your needs. You said you wanted me to stay, so here I am. And yet I find you like this.”

“Don't stay because you want to. Stay because I want you to.”

“I told myself to just stay away from you and let you be mad at me, because I do have so many issues that I'm not ready to share with you yet. And I tried so hard to stay away, but I can't.”

“Linda was nine then, as I was, but we were in love...it had all the shadings and complexities of mature adult love and maybe more, because there were not yet words for it, and because it was not yet fixed to comparisons or chronologies or the ways by which adults measure such things...I just loved her. Even then, at nine years old, I wanted to live inside her body. I wanted to melt into her bones -- that kind of love.”

“As I gazed upon the window, bead of rain began to look like streams of tears.”