“I fell in love when I was twenty-six. Love in my interpretation comes once in a lifetime.”

“There was an abyss between myself and my love. I could not interpret the voiding distance. I supposed later that my attempts at interpretation of the abyss between myself and my love, or otherwise put, my love and my love, were themselves partially successful interpretive gestures.I also realized that the abyss came about on account of the very account that I was loving. I assumed that interpretation would inscribe a course for the two things, my love and my love, to seek out and find each other.”

“I fell in love with you when you crashed into my fence post and chased after my chickens and fell down in the mud with the pigs. I fell in love with you when you taught everyone in town to line dance. I fell in love with you when you put Mo’s feelings before your own and stayed with her for as long as she needed you.” One fat tear slid down her cheek as he said, “And, most of all, I fell in love with you when you showed me that it was safe to love again. I keep falling in love with you again and again. Just like I’m falling right this second.”

“Sometimes I feel as if I've lived about six lifetimes...all fictionalized in my six books.”

“I am running into a new year and the old years blow back like a wind that I catch in my hair like strong fingers like all my old promises and it will be hard to let go of what I said to myself about myself when I was sixteen and twenty-six and thirty-six but I am running into a new year and I beg what i love and I leave to forgive me.”

“You love me?” he asked quietly. I dipped my face close and answered quietly, “On a cold night, a long time ago, you put your hands almost exactly where they are right now and, I might have been six years old, but I fell hard. So, yeah. For over twenty-seven years, every day, every minute, every second, I’ve loved you, Tucker Creed.”