“Later, Antonio said to me - and how I treasure this, how I wish he's say it to me every day! - 'The first time I saw you, I saw the sun in your face.”

“You know, you’ve set a really bad precedent for first dates,” I said. “How is anyone ever going to top this?”I turned to him for the first time. He was watching me, not the scenery. “I brought you here because I wanted to see the look on your face when you saw this place.” He smiled, and my heart flipped over. “It was worth the trip.”

“When I saw him look at me with lust, I dropped my eyes but, in glancing away from him, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. And I saw myself, suddenly, as he saw me, my pale face, the way the muscles in my neck stuck out like thin wire. I saw how much that cruel necklace became me. And, for the first time in my innocent and confined life, I sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption that took my breath away.”

“How can you lose me? You’ve owned me from the first moment I saw you.”

“But I saw this video, not even the whole thing, and I just knew that it was going to be my favorite song for...for the rest of my life. And it still is. It's still my favorite song...Lincoln, I said you were cute because I didn't know how to say--because I didn't think I was allowed to say--anything else. But every time I saw you, I felt like I did the first time I heard that song.”

“Later Achilles would play the lyre, as Chiron and I listened. My mother's lyre. He had brought it with him.'I wish I had known,' I said, the first day when he showed it to me. 'I almost did not come, because I did not want to believe it.'He smiled. 'Now I know how to make you follow me everywhere.”