“He’d known Lily forever. Or for as long as he could remember, which was basically the same thing.”

“For as long as he could remember, he’d suffered from a vague nagging feeling of being not all there.”

“Graham licked his lips. Merry fucking Christmas to me. How could he say no? He’d dreamt of what Michael might look like under those jeans for almost as long as he’d known him. His imagination wasn’t nearly as good as he thought it was.”

“Forever is a really long time, you know? What do you do with forever?""The same thing you do when you don't have forever." He smiled wanly. "Live.”

“He’d sworn off sex, remember? Not unless he could do it properly, humanly, heartfully.”

“There were a lot of things he could say. "Son of a bitch!" would have been a good one. Or he could say, "Welcome to civilization!" He could have said, "Laugh this one off!" He might have said, "Fetch!" But he didn’t, because if he had said any of those things then he’d have known that what he had just done was murder.”