“That night had been the first time I’d felt alive, the adrenaline and endorphins making my body, still recovering from disease, feel…normal. It was then that I realized I’d risk anything to feel that way all the time—and most days, I did.”

“I’d allowed myself to feel love –yes, love– for another person in a way I’d once sworn to myself I never would. I’d become completely vulnerable, and now I’d been torn apart with hurt and catapulted onto a path I might never have taken otherwise. I’d risked my life for an outsider. For a stranger. Worse, I had a feeling I was going to do it again.”

“Our plans for the future made us laugh and feel close, but those same plans somehow made anything more than temporary between us seem impossible. It was the first time I’d ever had the feeling of missing someone I was still with.”

“As if this great outburst of anger had purged all my ills, killed all my hopes, I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world- and finding it so much like myself, in fact so fraternal, I realized that I’d been happy, and that I was still happy. For the final consummation and for me to feel less lonely, my last wish was that there should be a crowd of spectators at my execution and that they should greet me with cries of hatred.”

“Now that her spirit had left, I’d thought she would feel light. Then I realized it was the spirit that carries the weight of the body and not the other way around.”

“The whole time, I’d never seen, all you had spread before me. The whole time, I’d never seen, all I need was inside me. Now, I feel so different.”