“I watch the beauty for as long as I can, then turn and face the rest of it.”

“Did you learn?"The face in the corner watched the flames. "I did." There was a considerable pause. "Until I was nine. At that age, my mother sold the music studio and stopped teaching. SHe kept only the one instrument but gave up on me not long after I resisted the learning. I was foolish.""No," Papa said. "You were a boy.”

“And when we finally stood up and turned to face the world, I could feel something climbing through me. I could feel it on its hands and knees inside me, rising up, rising up - and I smiled.I smiled, thinking, The hunger, because I knew it all too well.The hunger.The desire.Then, slowly, as we walked on, I felt the beauty of it, and I could taste it, like words inside my mouth.”

“I'm always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty and I wonder how the same can be both.”

“The consequence of this is that I'm always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both. (Death)”

“She places her hands around my neck and rests her head on my shoulder. I can smell the sex on her, and my hope is that she can smell the love on me.”

“Together, they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would smile at the beauty of destruction.”