“In a world without love, this is what people are to each other: values, benefits, and liabilities, numbers and data. We weigh, we quantify, we measure, and the soul is ground to dust.”

“My father will pay,' [Julian] says after a beat. 'I'm valuable to the movement.' I don't say anything. In a world without love, this is what people are to each other: values, benefits and liabilities, numbers and data. We weigh, we quantify, we measure, and the soul is ground to dust.”

“That's the thing: We didn't really care. A world without love is also a world without stakes.”

“No one can tell us no. No one can make us stop. We have picked each other, and the rest of the world can go to hell.”

“We'll walk together holding hands, and kiss in broad daylight, and love each other as much as we want to, and no one will ever try to keep up apart.”

“They haven't killed us yet," I say, and I imagine that one day I will fly a plane over Portland, over Rochester, over every fenced-in city in the whole country, and I will bomb and bomb and bomb, and watch all their buildings smoldering to dust, and all those people melting and bleeding into flame, and I will see how they like it. If you take, we will take back. Steal from us, and we will rob you blind. When you squeeze, we will hit. This is the way the world is made now.”

“Who knows? Maybe they’re right. Maybe we are driven crazy by our feelings. Maybe love is a disease, and we would be better off without it. But we have chosen a different road. And in the end that is the point of escaping the cure: We are free to choose.We are even free to choose the wrong thing.”