“I became the very air; I was full of stars. I was the soaring spaces between the spires of the cathedral, the solemn breath of chimneys, a whispered prayer upon the winter wind. I was silence,and I was music, one clear transcendent chord rising toward Heaven. I believed, then, that I would have risen bodily into the sky but for the anchor of his hand in my hair and his round soft perfect mouth.”

“If I could keep a single moment for all time, that would be the one. I became the very air; I was full of stars.”

“The resolve written in his eyes said no, but I could see exactly where I would have to push, and how hard, to break that resolve. It would be shockingly easy, but I found I did not wish it. ... Some part of him would break, along with his resolve, and I did not see a way to make it whole again. The jagged edge of it would stab at him all his life.”

“I rose to standing, like Lars upon the barbican, the dark city spread at my feet. Lights twinkled in tavern windows, bobbed at the Wolfstoot Bridge construction. Once I had been suspended over this vast space, hanging and helpless, at a dragon’s mercy. Once I had feared that telling the truth would be like falling, that love would be like hitting the ground, but here I was, my feet firmly planted, standing on my own. We were all monsters and bastards, and we were all beautiful.”

“I was drawn to his aloofness, the way cats gravitate toward people who’d rather avoid them.”

“I heard you, sought you, and have found you. I have reached for you, across space and sense and the laws of nature. I do not know how.”

“...it's as if I have just solved Skivver's predictive equations, or even better, as if I have intuited the One Equation, seen the numbers behind the moon and the stars, behind mountains and history, art and death and yearning, as if my comprehension is large enough that it can encompass universes, from the beginning to the end of time.”