“Maybe, I thought, it's not distance that's the problem, but how you handle it.”

“With what you were talking about before. The world being broken. Maybe it isn't that we're supposed to find the pieces and put them back together. Maybe we're the pieces." Nick says."Maybe," Nick says, "what we're supposed to do is come together. That's how we stop the breaking.”

“I mean, what if love isn't a yes-or-no question? It's not either you're in love or you're not. I mean, aren't these different levels? And maybe these things, like words and expectations and whatever, don't go on top of the love. Maybe it's like a map, and they have all their own place, and when you see it from the sky - whoa.”

“Let your thoughts run free, as if your mind is taking a leisurely Sunday afternoon walk through a garden in spring bloom.I stand in the hallway, mute. Alone. I realize: I must develop the ability to go the distance rather than just envy it.Don't speak unless you can improve on silenceThe truth is never as interesting as what people whisper about themIt's because the dream is so perfect that I can walk away from itThat blackness brought me out of the nightmare and into this morning's light”

“Nick stands up and offers his hand to me. I have no idea what he wants, but what the hell, I take his hand anyway, and he pulls me up on my feet then presses against me for a slow dance and it's like we're in a dream where he's Christopher Plummer and I'm Julie Andrews and we're dancing on the marble floor of an Austrian terrace garden. Somehow my head presses Nick's t-shirt and in this moment I am forgetting about time and Tal because maybe my life isn't over. Maybe it's only beginning.”

“Maybe your unspeakable defects give you power too?”

“I thought about the bigger picture of my life, and about the people—and particularly the guys—I would encounter during my lifetime. How would I ever know when that moment was right, when expectation met anticipation and formed … connection?”