“The light. The light is so bright that all that remains is you and the darkness. You can feel the audience breathing. It's like holding a gun or standing on a precipice and knowing you must jump. It feels slow and fast. It's like dying and being born and fucking and crying. It's like falling in love and being utterly alone with God; you taste your own mouth and feel your own skin and I knew I was alive and I knew who I was and that that wasn't who I'd been up till then. I'd been so far away but I knew I was home.”

“The truth is I love being alive. And I love feeling free. So if I can't have those things then I feel like a caged animal and I'd rather not be in a cage. I'd rather be dead. And it's real simple. And I think it's not that uncommon.”

“When I was feeling more secure, I started to see his insecurities. Aren't relationships like that? It's like being on a seesaw. There are those precious moments when you're just even with each other, but you move through that, and then one person being down by definition means the other person is up. I knew he loved me, and I knew he was afraid. I discovered that, if you look, you can actually see everything. All you have to do is clear away your own fears. The things you think are so well hidden: we can all see them. That's the secret. Everyone can see everything.”

“Our passion is like what's described in my love letters: it's like coming home, finally, when I never even knew I'd been away.”

“Your mother stands against everything my parents believe in," I say. "But I'm not my parents.""Aria," Hunter whispers into my ear."Yes?""Just kiss me."We press our lips together gentle, and it's like I am alive, on fire, like I can do anything in the world. I know this because he's a mystic, but there's something more familiar, something safe and sexy and irresistible about the way his lips feel, his tongue brushing lightly against mine. Our passion is like what's described in my love letters: it's like coming home, finally, when I never even knew I'd been away.”

“But I know I would not go out. I had taken this time to fall in love instead — in love with the sort of helplessness I had not felt in death — the helplessness of being alive, the dark bright pity of being human — feeling as you went, groping in corners and opening your arms to light - all of it part of navigating the unknown.”