“If I could really love, I would take awaythese tubes dripping lipids and glucoseinto your blood. I would liquefy the thingsyou love and flood them through your veins:our sleeping dogs' rhythmic breathing, hugeorange trumpets of the amaryllis we thoughtwould never bloom, the crunch of the gravelroad coming home. If I could really love,I would climb onto your narrow backand wrap myself around, guarding likea ladybug, or Achilles' mighty shield.”

“I believed that if I had the whole story, if I had the opportunity to really know the person I was sitting with, there would be nobody I could not love.”

“Go away," he said. "Go away. I wish you had never come here. I wish I had never heard of the Light and the Dark, and your damned old Merriman and his rhymes. If I had your golden harp now I would throw it in the sea. I am not a part of your stupid quest anymore, I don't care what happens to it. And Cafall was never a part of it either, or a part of your pretty pattern. He was my dog, and I loved him more than anything in the world, and now he is dead. Go away.”

“What happened was that I caught a glimpse of something I desperately needed to believe in at that point in my life. I wanted to believe there could be something within you that was so essential and so courageous that nothing - no boyfriend, no employer, no trauma - could tarnish or rob you of it. And if you had that kind of unbreakable core, not only would it always be yours, but even in your darkest moments others would see it in you, and help you out before the worse came to the absolute worst.”

“I surround myself with love by loving everything around me.”

“Not want you?” His voice was rough. “Everett, I'd lay you down right now in this thin blanket of snow and take you.” Everett's eyes widened, but Alex's mind was racing, the images coming at him too quick for him to hold them back. “The cold air would touch you and then my mouth.” He moved back into Everett's space, and Everett groaned. “My hands. Naked, Everett. I could bite your long limbs and lick the grace from your words and shock the neighbors with what obscenities I'd drive from your lips.”

“Hearing the sound of your breathing as you sleep,with the dog at your feet, his head restingon a shoe, and the clock's tickinglike water dripping in a sink-- I know that, even if reincarnation were a fact,given the inherent cruelty of the worldwhere beautiful things and peopleare blasted apart all the day long,I would never want to come back, knowingI could never be this lucky twice...”