“Always a trade. Always a compromise. Until there wasn't anything left to bargain with, because neither one us had any clue what to do.”

“She always used to say that the past is a relentless parasite in its quest, feeding off of the senses, looking for anything that will trigger a memory–forever there to complicate the present, forever there to remind us that it will always be a piece of us. I never had a clue as to what she meant, until now.”

“I suppose it's not a compromise if only one of you considers it such, but that was what our compromises tended to look like. One of us was always angry.”

“A lot of what we do in relationships involve compromises. A lot of our relationships are exchanges in currencies like affection, acceptance, money, sexual and other sorts of pleasure, shelter, convenience, belonging etc. The self in relation with the communal is always trading something. The important question is what aspect of the self should not be traded.”

“She was mine, had always been, and I'd always been hers. Despite what I'd done, the wounds I'd inflicted, she had always been mine.... our hearts had been tied, our bond one that neither of us could ever escape.”

“It’s not always rainbows and butterfliesIt’s compromise that moves us along”